The Government Hub

The City Charter defines the structure of city government, the powers of the mayor, the council, the borough presidents, and community boards, how the budget is set, and how land use decisions get made. It is not static. A Charter Revision Commission can be convened to propose amendments, which go to voters as ballot questions. Those changes built the city we have, from consolidation in 1898, a vote decided in Brooklyn by 277 votes, to the creation of community boards, to the 2025 amendments that created faster land use review pathways for affordable housing.

Voters were discerning, not disengaged. Of the six 2025 ballot questions, two failed and the three housing measures passed overwhelmingly. In 73 of CB6’s 75 election districts, voters approved those housing measures. The entities that claimed to speak for neighborhoods in our district did not even win their own blocks. When it comes time to count votes, decibels do not count twice.

Home rule is not absolute. Albany sets the terms for many city powers, which is why issues that feel intensely local, housing, transportation, environmental review, often require state action or are constrained by state law. Article I, Section 19 of the State Constitution now says that each person has a right to clean air and water and a healthful environment. For a district with the Gowanus Canal, industrial corridors, truck traffic and serious flooding exposure, that sentence is not abstract.

And every year our Statement of District Needs opens on the same premise: budgets are moral documents. What follows in it is not a wish list. It is a statement of what this community needs to function, what it needs to be fair, and what it needs to remain livable for everyone who lives here, not just the people who can afford to stay.