City council speaker Adrienne Adams has been vocal about her plans to turn the city’s underutilized land and buildings, including certain library branches, into housing and community spaces.
In her third State of the City address on Wednesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House, in which she covered housing, education, childcare, mental health, and other essential services for residents, Speaker Adams indicated lawmakers’ primary policy concerns as the Council reviews Mayor Eric Adams’ preliminary spending outline for next year.
Speaker Adams revealed a variety of proposals that could potentially make the city more affordable and family-friendly, urging local officials to “get back to basics” and “make government work” for all New Yorkers.
Her comments came after notable disagreements between the 51-member Legislature and the mayor over budgetary and criminal justice matters have occurred.
This year, the Council has already overridden Mayor Adams’ veto of measures that would push the NYPD to record demographic information on low-level investigatory stops and ban most uses of solitary confinement in city prisons.
The council has also joined the nonprofit, Legal Aid Society, in a lawsuit against the mayor for allegedly refusing to enact legislation expanding access to rental assistance programs for struggling New Yorkers that are facing homelessness.
“As a co-equal branch of government, our duty is to turn these ideas into effective laws and to conduct oversight,” said Speaker Adams, who is the first Black woman to head the Council. “But laws and policies are only as good as their implementation. … We must focus on execution and investment.”
“Building on previous efforts to expand their reach presents an opportunity to modernize our library branches for New Yorkers and create new community spaces like early childhood education centers,” she added. “By building homes connected to the pillars of our communities, we can create self-sufficient ecosystems that enable all of us to thrive together.”
Speaker Adams also noted that the 172-acre Aqueduct Racetrack in her Southeast Queens district should be transformed for housing purposes, as it is expected to cease its horse races in the coming years. Her pitch entails redeveloping adjacent city-owned land along the subway’s A line and working with state officials on the state-regulated portions of the Aqueduct.
Improving maternal health services also remains a primary goal for the Council, and Speaker Adams has claimed that the city’s free doula initiative initially scheduled to end this summer, would become permanent, on top of them introducing additional measures to restore racial inequities in maternal healthcare.
