2024 New York City Charter Revision Commission Adopts Ballot Proposals for November Election

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2024 New York City Charter Revision Commission Adopts Ballot Proposals for November Election

Commissioners Adopt Five Ballot Proposals Related to Clean Streets, Fiscal Responsibility, Public Safety, Capital Planning, Minority-and Women-Owned Businesses, and Modernization of City Policies Related to Film Permitting and Archival Review

Ballot Proposals Followed Full Review of City’s Charter, Expert and Elected Official Testimony, Public Feedback, Staff Research, and Public Hearings Attended by More Than 750 New Yorkers in All Five Boroughs

NEW YORK – Today, following their final public meeting, the 2024 New York City Charter Revision Commission (CRC) approved the five ballot proposals detailed in the CRC’s report issued earlier this week, as amended at the CRC’s meeting earlier this afternoon. The ballot proposals were made after a review of the entire city charter; 12 hearings across all five boroughs; and testimony from members of the public, experts, elected officials, good government groups, and academics. CRC members received testimony from more than 240 New Yorkers at public hearings. Additionally, the CRC received more than 2,300 written comments and public hearings were attended by more than 750 New Yorkers in-person and virtually. The proposals will now be submitted to the New York City Board of Elections to be placed on the ballot for November’s general election.

The five approved ballot questions, as amended, are:

Clean Streets: The CRC proposes an amendment to expand and clarify the New York City Department of Sanitation’s (DSNY) authority to keep the city clean. The amendment would:

Enable DSNY, at the mayor’s direction, to clean any city-owned property.

Clarify that DSNY has the authority to require garbage to be containerized.

Extend DSNY enforcement authority over street vendors to vending on other types of city property, instead of just streets and sidewalks.

Fiscal Responsibility: The CRC proposes an amendment intended to improve how the city assesses the fiscal impact of proposed local laws and address certain outdated and inefficient budget deadlines. The amendment would:

Require that an initial fiscal impact statement be prepared prior to a public hearing on a proposed local law.

Require an updated fiscal impact statement prior to a vote on a proposed local law by the full City Council.

Require that fiscal impact statements for proposed laws contain an estimate by the City Council and require that the Council provide an opportunity for the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget to submit fiscal impact statements at the same time.

Update several budget-related deadlines, including moving the preliminary budget deadline from January 16 to February 1 in years following a mayoral election and extending the deadline for submission of the executive budget from April 26 to May 1 in order to ensure the executive budget reflects valuable information about tax collections and revenues obtained at the April 1 tax deadline.

Public Safety: The CRC proposes an amendment intended to promote public input and deliberation before the City Council votes on local laws affecting public safety operations of certain agencies. The amendment would:

Establish additional procedural requirements when the City Council considers proposed local laws affecting the public safety operations of three city agencies: the New York City Police Department, the New York City Department of Correction, and the Fire Department of the City of New York.

Specifically, it would require that when the full Council intends to vote on a covered public safety proposal, the Council must give an additional notice to the public, the mayor, and the commissioners of affected agencies at least 30 days in advance of such vote. During the period between the notice and the ultimate vote, the mayor and affected agencies could hold one or more additional public hearings on the proposal in order to solicit additional public input, though they would not be required to hold such hearings. These hearings could include, where appropriate, public hearings in all boroughs to facilitate input from impacted communities.

Capital Planning: The CRC proposes an amendment intended to improve the city’s capital planning process by promoting transparency and ensuring the city collects critical information to inform capital planning, and update capital planning deadlines. The amendment would:

Promote transparency by ensuring the city publishes more detailed information about the state of repair for facilities.

Ensure that the New York City Department of City Planning and the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget consider city facility conditions and maintenance needs, together with other factors such as geographic distribution, impact on resiliency, and the criticality of an asset to an agency’s function or mission when developing the 10-Year Capital Strategy.

Amend the date that the 10-Year Capital Strategy is due from November 1st to align with the date for the city’s preliminary budget, and similarly change the date for the public hearing associated with the 10-Year Capital Strategy to accommodate the later date for the initial submission.

Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (M/WBEs) and Modernization of City Operations: The CRC proposes an amendment to update several charter provisions intended to improve city government operations. The amendment would:

Enshrine the chief business diversity officer in the charter and provide that this position will serve as the point of contact for M/WBEs, evaluate the efficacy of city policies to address disparities in procurement, and propose needed changes to city policy.

Empower the mayor to give the office that processes film permits — the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment — the power to issue those permits.

Combine two charter-created boards that share the same mission of reviewing municipal archives.

A full list of the public hearings held by the CRC is available on the CRC's Public Meetings and Hearings webpage. All meetings were open to the public, live streamed, and 10 of the 12 hearings were held in the evening to accommodate as many New Yorkers as possible. Language translation services and American Sign Language interpreters were available, and each meeting was held in an accessible space. The public was alerted to CRC public meetings through legal notices, media outreach — including through ethnic and community media — and by utilizing messages through organizations with large distribution lists, including community boards and elected officials. Public notices for each meeting were published in the city record and made available on the CRC website. All notices were translated into Bengali, simplified and traditional Chinese, Korean, and Spanish.

All the CRC’s public documents — including its preliminary report, press releases, translations of commission materials, and other notices — as well as recordings of all the commission’s public hearings may be found online on the CRC's website.