{"id":17943,"date":"2025-10-27T05:58:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T05:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/17943\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T05:58:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T05:58:23","slug":"four-city-ballot-proposals-this-year-deserve-to-pass-one-other-doesnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/17943\/","title":{"rendered":"Four city ballot proposals this year deserve to pass \u2014 one other doesn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

On ballots this year, Gotham voters will see five proposals for changes to the City Charter: Four would improve the city, the fifth could worsen it.<\/p>\n

New Yorkers should vote \u201cyes\u201d on Proposals 2, 3, 4 and 5, and \u201cno\u201d on Prop No. 6.<\/p>\n

Props 2, 3 and 4 could lead to a significant boost in the city\u2019s affordable-housing stock, something Gotham sorely needs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prop 5 requires the City Planning Department to create and oversee a single, consolidated digital City Map, bringing it into the 21 century.<\/p>\n

Proposal No. 2: Fast Track Affordable Housing to Build More Affordable Housing Across the City. This would create a new system that cuts months off the approval process for publicly financed affordable-housing projects and those in areas where relatively little of it is being developed.<\/p>\n

It does that mainly by cutting out the City Council, where political issues <\/a>and narrow interests can slow or stop development where it\u2019s most needed.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

Prop No. 3: Simplify Review of Modest Housing and Infrastructure Projects. This no-brainer speeds up the review process on smaller projects \u2014 again, shaving off months \u2014 by dropping the need for the City Council\u2019s OK and leaving approvals to community boards and borough presidents, with final say left to the City Planning Commission.<\/p>\n

Prop No. 4: Establish an Affordable Housing Appeals Board with Council, Borough, and Citywide Representation. This likewise aims to boost affordable housing by giving new boards \u2014 each consisting of the mayor, City Council speaker and relevant borough president \u2014 the right to reverse City Council decisions on these projects.<\/p>\n

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That would end the council\u2019s poisonous practice of letting a single council member, in effect, nix affordable housing (among other projects) in his district. Instead, it puts the interests of the city as a whole first.<\/p>\n

Prop No. 5: Create a Digital City Map to Modernize City Operations. It\u2019s insane that the City Map isn\u2019t already online and that local \u201ctopographical bureaus\u201d in each borough are managing some 8,000 paper maps.<\/p>\n

Proponents are absolutely right that consolidating, centralizing and posting these maps online would broaden and simplify access to them and speed up projects<\/p>\n

Prop No. 6: Move Local Elections to Presidential Election Years to Increase Voter Participation. This is the city ballot proposal voters should nix. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, voter participation might grow<\/a> if local elections are moved; proponents claim this would make it harder for small-but-disciplined outfits like the Democratic Socialists to dominate primaries.<\/p>\n

Yet, as we see it, voters would pay far less attention to local races with presidential and congressional campaigns under way: What good is boosting turnout if the average voter is less informed?<\/p>\n

Our general rule on all ballot measures is: If you\u2019re not sure, vote \u201cno.\u201d But this year, four of them seem worth supporting.<\/p>\n

You can also skip these questions; don\u2019t let any uncertainty on them stop you from making it to the polls. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On ballots this year, Gotham voters will see five proposals for changes to the City Charter: Four would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[433,12390,301,304,416,2907,75,84,83,5467,9,24,63,299],"class_list":{"0":"post-17943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-affordable-housing","9":"tag-charter","10":"tag-city-council","11":"tag-editorial","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-housing","14":"tag-manhattan","15":"tag-manhattan-headlines","16":"tag-manhattan-news","17":"tag-maps","18":"tag-new-york","19":"tag-new-york-city","20":"tag-nyc","21":"tag-opinion"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}