Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a 15% spike in violent crime citywide. It’s time to give law enforcement the tools and training they need to get their jobs done.

Every year, officers retire, and we’re not recruiting enough folks to fill the gaps. As a result, the NYPD is once again forced to do more with less. That needs to change.

We need to work with legislators in Albany to restore judicial discretion when it comes to setting bail for violent and chronic offenders. In turn, City Hall can work to reduce recidivism by providing those recently released with greater opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship.

Rebuilding conditions, security, and trust on Rikers Island is also essential. Construction of any new prison facility in our own backyards is not an option.

When it comes to education, students always come first. Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a dramatic 12% drop in K-12 public school enrollment – while religious, private, and charter programs have seen record demand. In that same time, public school test scores dropped below 50% across the board.

Getting teachers the resources they need, growing 3-K and Pre-K education, strengthening and expanding gifted and talented programs – especially in underserved neighborhoods, preserving and expanding specialized high schools and other accelerated learning options are only just a few ways we can improve academic outcomes, close the achievement gap, and set over one million New York City children on a path to success.

By the same token, modernizing our facilities, instituting mechanisms for greater administrative accountability, establishing individual educational savings accounts for every student to help mitigate the costs of higher education, and providing additional support for children with special needs would pay dividends towards ensuring that every student has the opportunity to unleash their full potential.

Our city keeps growing. Our available housing keeps shrinking. Not since the Great Depression have nearly 70,000 New Yorkers lived without shelter.

Our current status quo is unacceptable, unsustainable, and will require landlords, tenants, and developers alike to work together for a complete overhaul of New York’s obsolete 1961 zoning laws.

We need to repurpose empty commercial properties for residential and mixed use. We need City Hall to assist local landlords with necessary upgrades to individual units all across the five boroughs.

NYCHA too cannot continue to be business as usual, and will require further changes to provide long term stability to a system that for too long has been rigged against our most vulnerable residents.

Mayor Adams is ready to dump Emblem Health’s current SeniorCare for municipal workers, retirees, and their dependents – claiming it will save the city $600 million by switching to Washington’s troubled Medicare Advantage program.

Ensuring our seniors, municipal employees, and their dependents get to keep their favorite doctors, keep the coverage that’s been working for them for years, and feel secure knowing they will never be stuck waiting long hours, days, weeks, months for life saving health care or costly prescriptions they couldn’t otherwise afford is non-negotiable.

Tracking from New York City’s Independent Budget Office revealed our state still holds a whopping $2.8 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief funds.

If I were at City Hall, I’d be making calls morning, noon, night, and day to pry loose every last penny I could in order to close the $600 million gap to save seniors, municipal workers, and their dependents from ever seeing a single disruption to their every day health care.

Women have fought long and hard to preserve reproductive rights here in New York. We must ensure these rights remain available for future generations, and that all women continue to receive proper guidance and treatment in the course of determining their own personal health care.

A majority of our city’s roads, bridges, tunnels, and water mains are more than sixty years old and in varying states of falling apart. Our sanitation system too is in similar decay. Ten years ago, it would’ve cost nearly $50 billion to bring them all into a state of good repair. Today, that number is upwards of $150 billion.

Over the next two years, MTA estimates nearly $3 billion in budget shortfalls.

Rather than resort to fare hikes or shuttering subway lines entirely, there’s a variety of solutions the MTA could employ – from temporarily suspending late night service to improve track maintenance and save money, to adding more night buses, installing platform screen safety doors, and reevaluating the way MTA negotiates labor contracts.

But instead, City Hall has so far preferred to kick the proverbial can down the fracture critical road. Not on my watch.