STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The man tasked with figuring out how to pay for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s ambitious affordability agenda is no stranger to Staten Island.

In fact, Sherif Soliman knows the borough better than most working in city government, having grown up and started his career here on Staten Island.

Soliman, who moved to New Springville with his family at 11 years old, will serve as director of the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget for the incoming administration.

Though not born here and no longer living here, Soliman still considers himself a Staten Islander at heart, having spent most of his formative years in the borough.

Last week, Soliman sat down the Advance/SILive.com for an exclusive interview to discuss his experiences on Staten Island and what he views as the highest priorities for the borough in the coming years.

After moving from Queens to Staten Island in 1986, Soliman attended the Rocco Laurie Intermediate School (I.S. 72) in New Springville before graduating from Port Richmond High School.

“The best friends I have today are friends I grew up with on Staten Island,” said Soliman.

Like any former Staten Islander, he reflected fondly on the borough’s pizzerias, shouting out Denino’s, Joe and Pat’s and Brother’s.

“Going to Port Richmond High School, we used to always stop at Brother’s to get squares, as we called them, or the Sicilian slices, which were among the best I’ve had still to this day,” he reminisced.

Soliman is well aware of Staten Island’s perception as the forgotten borough, having grown up in New Springville near what was once the city’s literal dumping grounds.

“From New Springville, you would see the heaps and heaps of garbage and the smell that came along with that sometimes was unbearable. So that sort of was my first impression of how Staten Island needed to move beyond being the place where all the garbage went,” said Soliman. “So I’m acutely aware of the residents of Staten Island feeling like Staten Island has been the forgotten borough.”

He went on to discuss some of the borough’s longstanding transportation issues, including heavy car traffic, battered roadways and a lack of mass transit options compared to the rest of the city.

“We’re attuned to those concerns of Staten Islanders. Again, I’ve lived it, and so that is the kind of knowledge that I’ll bring with me to the Office of Management and Budget, and knowing the concerns of Staten Island, hopefully be in a position, as we move forward on putting out the budget, to address some of those issues,” Soliman said.

Soliman acknowledged that the city will need quite a bit of help in order to fund Mamdani’s ambitious affordability agenda, which includes proposals like free buses and universal childcare.

“There are ongoing conversations with the state of New York, with the governor and her team. The governor has been public about the desire to do something on childcare, and so we’re looking forward to continuing those conversations, and hopefully they’ll bear fruit,” he said.

The administration also plans to work with various city agencies to identify potential efficiencies that could reduce existing costs and reallocate those funds towards affordability initiatives.

When asked about funding priorities for Staten Island, Soliman reiterated the need to improve mass transit options and make the borough more affordable, but also noted the need to continue enhancing environmental resiliency to reduce flooding and better prepare the borough for future storms.

“We will look at our capital plan, we will look at our budget, and we will look at where there are ongoing efforts to address environmental resiliency, and we will look at opportunities to enhance those, or to look at ways that we can move projects forward,” he said. “I know that that’s really a concern in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.”

More on Soliman’s career

Early in his career, Soliman was chief of staff to former Assemblyman Eric Vitaliano. He was later tapped to lead the New York State Legislative Affairs team and had roles that included serving as director of communications at the New York City Employees’ Retirement System and chief of staff for the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Operations.

He was later appointed as Department of Finance Commissioner at the end of 2020 by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and then served as the director of Mayor Eric Adams’ Office of Policy and Planning.

Most recently, Soliman served as senior vice chancellor and chief financial officer of the City University of New York. During that time, he managed to reduce the structural deficit at CUNY by 77% and secured hundreds of millions of dollars for CUNY labor contracts in the state budget, he said.

Soliman also briefly sat on the MTA Board, to which he was nominated by Mayor Adams in May 2022.

“A successful administration must have a budget that reflects the needs of working New Yorkers. Sherif Soliman is a skilled negotiator and dedicated public servant whose leadership of the Office of Management and Budget will ensure our administration fulfills our affordability agenda,” Mamdani said last week.