The BP’s budget director, Fanny Lin, recommended the city fund the top priorities for each board, provide live broadcasting services for meetings and provide an urban planner for each board.
Richards’ office also asked the mayor and the City Council to fund a new police precinct in Northern Queens, a longtime request from Community Board 7, which includes the neighborhoods of College Point, Whitestone, Flushing and Willets Point. Former Mayor Eric Adams promised the board that City Hall would explore creating a new precinct in the area to supplement the 109th Precinct in anticipation of the creation of an entirely new neighborhood in Willets Point expected to come online in phases beginning this year.
“The time for them to make any kind of meaningful response from the 109th, which is located down in the southwest corner of our district, out to the top corner, is just insurmountable,” Apelian told the Eagle last month.
The BP’s office said a new precinct would “be very helpful.”
Richards called it a matter of political will, just as it was with the 116th Precinct in Southeast Queens, which took more than a generation of advocacy before it opened last year.
“It’s a political, mayoral conversation,” he said. “I think the data speaks for itself, and I think…it’s just a no-brainer.”
Queens is also facing general cuts to its schools, libraries and cultural institutions – funding the BP’s office wants to restore.
The city is currently gearing up for budget negotiations.
On Tuesday, the City Council said they found $1.7 billion in savings, which could potentially halt the city from needing to reach into rainy day funds – as suggested by Mamdani – to pay for programs in this year’s budget.
Mamdani has proposed widespread cuts and savings to fill the gap, and has controversially floated a nine percent increase in property taxes to fill the rest if the state does not step in and raise taxes on millionaires and corporations.
The mayor has called the hike a “last resort,” but just the suggestion of the tax increase drew widespread criticism from his usual detractors but also his close allies – including Richards.
“I’m firmly against…the property tax proposal,” he said at a budget hearing last month.
Closing out Monday night’s meeting, Richards doubled down on that sentiment but seemed hopeful the city could find a budget solution while avoiding the tax increase.
“We are facing some serious federal headwinds, and we’re going to be working with Albany to do all we can to close this gap without property taxes being raised on us,” he said.