Adams Administration to Launch 'MyCity' Portal in Coming Weeks with Child Care Services First
Mayor Adams (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign promise to launch the “MyCity” centralized portal for city benefits will soon become reality, administration officials told the City Council on Thursday.
At a budget hearing held by the Council’s Committee on Technology, New York City Chief Technology Officer Matthew Fraser said that MyCity will be “rolling out in a few weeks,” initially offering a child care subsidy application portal before expanding to other city benefits.
MyCity was one of the signature proposals that Adams, a first-term Democrat, advanced on the campaign trail, as he criticized the city’s dysfunctional and bureaucracy-laden government and pledged a more efficient, tech-friendly administration.
The portal, he promised, would be a one-stop-shop for benefits and services. It would allow low-income New Yorkers to apply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), cash benefits, or rental assistance. It would help businesses cut through red tape to get licenses and permits. And, as the mayor promised in his first State of the City speech in April 2022, it would help parents and caregivers apply for child care. All among many other uses.
“We know that working parents don’t have time to navigate complex bureaucracy to get their children care, and we are going to make sure that city government works for them,” Adams said at the time.
In public interviews in December and January, Adams acknowledged that MyCity was set for a later launch than he might have hoped but called it one of his main priorities for his second year in office. “One of the top things I want to do is something called MyCity Card,” Adams said in a January 9 interview on WBLS 107.5 FM. “It’s one card that all New Yorkers can get the resources that they deserve so they'll know what's available to them. It's using technology. That's what this year's about, using technology to improve the quality of life of New Yorkers and continue to address the public safety issue.” (It’s not clear what Adams meant by “card” but the plan is for MyCity to be an online portal.)
At the hearing this week, Fraser updated the Council on the next steps for the MyCity portal after the imminent launch of the child care application. He said Office of Technology and Innovation is looking at “workforce development and how we bring people into public service, looking at small businesses and how they grow and interact with the city and get access to the services that they need and…looking at other things that live within the Health and Human Services umbrella to see how we can bring those into a common platform.”
“The key here is as we move, over time, moving away from individual systems and bringing them into a single place,” Fraser said, referring to the redundancies that Adams often decried on the campaign trail. “It's like a snowball that builds mass as it goes downhill. It took a lot of effort to get the underpinning platform done. Now that we've got the platform done and we've got the first service, the things that come thereafter will come at a much more expedient pace.”
The development of the portal hasn’t been as quick as the administration originally envisioned. The portal was meant to be created in-house by the Office of Technology and Innovation, but was outsourced — following the pattern that many civic technologists and other experts have decried. After OTI predicted a rollout before the end of last year, it is now set to release the portal in a few weeks, 15 months into Adams’ term. The last hurdle, Fraser said at Thursday’s hearing, is “getting a seal of approval from our colleagues in state government whose subsidies are included in the portal.” A spokesperson for OTI would not clarify to Gotham Gazette what type of approval the city needs.
The state is likely to support the city’s efforts (and is working on its own more user-friendly government access points). Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have been close partners, particularly on child care initiatives. In the state budget last year, Hochul delivered on major priorities for herself and Adams including a $4 billion budget allocation over four years for child care services in the city (out of a total $7 billion statewide), an expanded income eligibility threshold for child care subsidies, and tax incentives for property owners to create child care centers and for businesses that provide employers with free or discounted child care.
At Thursday’s hearing, when asked by Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez, chair of the technology committee, about OTI’s budget priorities, Fraser said the agency is focused on “ensuring that we democratize access to city services.” MyCity is central to that goal.
“A lot of the challenges that we face and what our constituents face is we have a bureaucracy that's overly complex to interact with, and figuring out ways where we can streamline and simplify that process is one of the things that we're focused on,” he said. The MyCity portal “signifies a change to how we've done business historically, where we take the emphasis from the agency-specific service and we shift it to the customer, the person, the resident that requires that service.”
Fraser detailed that the new portal will be effective in cutting down the time and effort it takes people to receive city services, while also reducing the workload of city agencies and the need for more staff. For instance, parents that want to access child care currently must fill out a 15-page form and submit it to one of three agencies, which then has to schedule an interview and request supplemental documents to determine the applicant’s eligibility. “So by digitizing the process, making sure that all those required documents are submitted ahead of time, it reduces the administrative burden on the people that are responsible for that task,” he said.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
With 16% Vacancy Rate, City Planning Department ‘Laser Focused’ on Staffing to Advance 'Ambitious' Agenda
City Planning Head Dan Garodnick (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
The acute staffing crisis at city agencies threatens to undo the many ambitious plans announced by Mayor Eric Adams, and has become the central concern for the City Council as it examines the mayor’s proposed $102.7 billion preliminary budget for next fiscal year.
On Thursday, at a Council hearing focused on the Department of City Planning, a similar refrain emerged as the agency currently faces a 18% personnel vacancy rate, which includes recent hires not yet onboarded, and has a considerable agenda now and for the years ahead.
Design and implementation of the administration's land-use policies falls to a significant degree under the purview of City Planning, and Mayor Adams has set it to task. He has proposed a massive “Get Stuff Built” housing plan with a “moonshot” goal of building 500,000 new units of housing over the next decade and he is also pursuing three citywide zoning text amendments under his “City of Yes” plan that are meant to promote affordable housing, economic development, and climate sustainability.
At the same time, the city is lobbying for various proposals at the state level as Governor Kathy Hochul pursues her own “housing compact” that will create 800,000 units of housing over ten years.
The Department of City Planning is taking the lead on the zoning amendments as well as dozens of land-use process reforms meant to speed up permitting, environmental assessments, construction, and more to facilitate the larger housing plan. And, it is constantly advancing individual affordable housing and economic development projects, while currently working on several area rezonings in the city, including in Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens, with more to come.
“City Planning continues to be laser focused on hiring staff to meet the ambitious goals we've set, under your and the mayor's leadership, for housing, job creation, and climate resiliency,” said Dan Garodnick, Director of the Department of City Planning and Chair of the City Planning Commission, at Thursday’s hearing. Garodnick, a former City Council member from Manhattan himself, was appointed to the dual posts by Mayor Adams early last year.
Adams’ proposed budget for the Department of City Planning for the 2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1, is $44.3 million, a $4.8 million decrease from the budget for the current fiscal year that was adopted last June. In the proposed budget, the agency would see a net increase of one more position, bringing its budgeted headcount to 348.
But the agency has 286 employees – including 17 that were just hired and haven’t started yet. Out of the remaining 62 positions, 55 are vacant — for a nearly 16% vacancy rate — while another 7 are federal grant-funded positions that are currently unfunded. DCP did hire 74 new staffers in 2022 and is continuing to bring people on into this year. At the hearing, agency officials told the Council they had a 26% attrition rate, echoing a similar struggle that other agencies have also faced in retaining workers given the city's rigid workforce policies that do not allow any work-from-home or hybrid arrangements, low public sector salaries, and national labor shortages.
Garodnick, however, expressed optimism about the current state of affairs. “We believe we are now in a much better position than we were at the start of last year,” he said.
Though Council Member Rafael Salamanca Jr., a Bronx Democrat who chairs the Council’s land use committee, suggested that City Planning might need an even higher headcount beyond what is proposed in the preliminary budget, Garodnick said the agency would be able to meet its needs if it fills its vacancies. “We are hopeful that we continue to hire at the same pace…but we're not even at our budgeted headcount. So, to me, I think we should aspire to get there and that is what we are trying to do,” he said.
Part of the challenge seems to stem from low levels of pay at the agency, where city planners – who currently make up about 63% of the staff and are required to have either a bachelor’s degree and two years of experience or a master’s degree before being hired – start off with an annual salary of just over $55,000. Under questioning from Salamanca, Garodnick acknowledged that salary levels had led to departures and recruitment challenges.
“[Y]ou're right to say that this is a concern that has been presented by the folks who have left and certainly by prospective hires,” he said, noting that the agency had also seen a drop in applicants for city planner positions.
The low pay also means that those who apply for jobs tend to be wealthier and whiter, Garodnick said. “The people who can take those lower paying jobs frequently are disproportionately more privileged because they're doing something as a mission driven effort, and they tend to be more white on the whole so it is not an area in which it helps our ability to create a more diverse workforce,” he said.
Asked by Council Member Kevin Riley, a Bronx Democrat who chairs the Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises, David Parish, DCP’s Chief Operating Officer, outlined the agency’s recruitment efforts. DCP has hired an Assistant Director of Recruitment and Retention, and is holding hiring panels roughly every six weeks, as well as “salary exercises to look for promotional opportunities and increase wages,” Parrish said. “We're doing everything we can to recruit and retain as quickly as possible.”
[READ: At First Preliminary Budget Hearing, City Council Takes Aim at Agency Staffing Crisis]
The hearing also touched on City Planning’s work ahead.
Garodnick said the first of the proposed citywide zoning amendments, dubbed “City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality,” will head to public review on April 24, just after Earth Day.
The agency also recently created a seven-member Community Planning and Engagement Division to conduct outreach on the many initiatives the city is pursuing. “We want to find ways to speak the language of the various communities of New York City and I mean, like literally actually speak the language,” Garodnick said. “And I also mean talk in ways that demystify some of these complicated concepts that we're frequently engaged in communities on.”
Zoning for Carbon Neutrality will be followed by Zoning for Economic Opportunity, then perhaps the most ambitious, important, and political fraught: Zoning for Housing Opportunity, which is expected to be unveiled in early 2024.
Besides the citywide zoning amendments, the Department of City Planning is also heading up several major neighborhood rezoning efforts that are underway including around the four new MetroNorth Stations planned for the East Bronx and along Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The agency is also in the preliminary stages of studying a rezoning in Midtown South in Manhattan, another on Staten Island’s North Shore, and has been asked by City Council Member Julie Won and the local community board to start work on rezoning a stretch of Northern Boulevard in Queens.
Garodnick also addressed one of the city’s priorities at the state level, the next step in joint city and state efforts to provoke the conversion of unused office space into housing. Governor Hochul’s housing plan includes allowing conversions of office space into housing, to capitalize on office vacancies caused by the pandemic. At the hearing, Council members pushed Garodnick on the necessary steps to ensure that new housing is affordable.
“I think most fundamentally, we recognize the challenges here and that we need to find ways to incentivize the creation of affordable housing in connection with office conversions today,” Garodnick said. “There is no incentive to do that. Office conversion gives you a market rate unit. Full stop.”
Hochul has floated a proposal called Affordable Housing from Commercial Conversions, which would provide a 19-year tax break in exchange for a requirement that 20% of converted units are rent-stabilized and affordable for households making 70% of the area median income. Though Garodnick said the administration supports some level of tax breaks for such conversions, he did not comment specifically on Hochul’s proposal.
[READ: City Council Questions Mayor's Additional Planned Cuts to Internal Government Watchdog]
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Note - this article has been corrected to note that DCP’s vacancy rate is about 16%, not 18%, and that David Parish is DCP’s Chief Operating Officer, not Chief Financial Officer.
Council Speaker Adams Outlines State of the City Agenda Focused on Housing and Economic Mobility
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (photo: John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a Queens Democrat, on Wednesday dedicated her second State of the City speech to the essential workers of New York City who “kept going and kept us going” during the pandemic. In her speech Adams announced an agenda for the year ahead focused on “economic mobility, housing, and healthier and safer neighborhoods.”
“Workers run this city. They put the people of this city over everything, and so should we,” Adams said, speaking at the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses and Community Center in Soundview in the Bronx. The speech was attended by dozens of elected officials including Mayor Eric Adams, Public Advocate Jumaane WIlliams, Comptroller Brad Lander, Council members, borough presidents, and district attorneys.
Speaker Adams announced a series of measures covering workforce development, higher education, early childhood education, affordable housing and homeownership, homelessness prevention, economic and industrial development, small business incentives, healthcare, public safety, and more. Those proposals were included in a detailed agenda she released Wednesday, titled “People Over Everything.”
Among the items on her agenda are a proposal to build new public housing developments; modernizing the city’s manufacturing zoning regulations; tweaks to the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing policy; expanding eligibility for the Fair Fares discounted MetroCard program; a mobile health care hub for food delivery workers; and more. Some of her proposals require legislative action and support from the mayoral administration, and even the state in some cases, while others are a matter of increased funding in the upcoming city budget.
Though the speaker extended a friendly welcome to her fellow Democrat, Mayor Adams (no relation), her speech took direct aim at his proposed $102.7 billion preliminary budget for the next fiscal year. Speaker Adams and many of her colleagues have been severely critical of cuts the mayor has already made and additional ones he’s proposed across city agencies. They’ve focused many questions, including at the Council’s first preliminary budget hearings this week, on the mayor’s handling of city government personnel, including failures to adapt recruitment and retention policies as the city faces a major staffing crisis and his proposed reduction in budgeted vacancies.
“Proposals in a speech are meaningless if they are not consistent with budget decisions,” she said, pointing specifically to cuts to 3-K, libraries, and CUNY. And she stressed a particular urgency in addressing agency personnel shortages. “It has created a domino effect, and now New Yorkers who rely on essential services are feeling those impacts in real time,” she said, alluding to the city’s reduced performance on things like distributing food stamps to closing affordable housing financing deals.
The mayor’s budget scraps a previously planned expansion of pre-kindergarten for three-year-olds, another area where the administration and the Council find themselves at loggerheads. The administration has insisted that there are thousands of vacant 3-K seats that should be filled before the program grows any further, but the Council has pushed back.
“We must work to correct the course that has weakened our 3-K system,” Speaker Adams said in her speech. She pointed to the “hollowed out” Early Childhood Education division at the Department of Education, another victim of the staffing shortage. She also said that the 3-K program should be “revamped and expanded with a newly designed contract,” along with salary parity for early childhood workers.
Adams also recommitted to the effort to close the scandal-ridden and violence-plagued Rikers Island jail complex. Rikers is set by law to close by the start of 2027 and be replaced by four borough-based jails everywhere but Staten Island, a plan that is contingent on reducing the jail population to below 3,300. But the jail population has increased in the last two years, exceeding 5,800 as of the latest count, and there were more detainee deaths last year than in a quarter century. Mayor Adams and his administration have been openly skeptical that the closure plan will be achievable on the current timeline.
“The conditions at Rikers are only creating harm for everyone there,” Speaker Adams said Wednesday, stressing the need to invest in pre-trial and alternative-to-incarceration programs, and supportive housing with re-entry programs for people leaving the jail system. “Advancing the closure of Rikers is more urgent now than ever before – for both public safety and human rights,” she said.
The speaker did not otherwise delve too deeply into public safety, though she did call for greater investments in street safety infrastructure, expanded community safety solutions to violent crime, and increased support for the city’s two Overdose Prevention Centers, which the mayor just pledged last week when he released a plan focused on mental health and drug addiction.
Adams, the first Black City Council speaker, took the speech as an opportunity to tout the Council’s achievements in her first year in the role, leading the first woman-majority Council. Those included the passage of abortion protections, measures to tackle racial disparities in maternal health, legislation to curb racial and gender wage disparities, creation of the state’s first community-based trauma recovery centers, and the approval of 40 land use projects that will create 12,000 units of housing, to name a few.
“We will continue to advance solutions for New Yorkers whose needs have too often been marginalized, because when we respond through this lens of equity, all New Yorkers win,” she said. “This means focusing on the needs of women, who make up 60% of our city’s frontline workforce, and people of color, who are three out of every four frontline workers.”
Adams also celebrated the success of the CUNY Reconnect program, which she proposed and launched last year for CUNY students that left without earning their degrees. Since its launch, the program has helped 16,000 students return to college, exceeding the original goal of 10,000. “The overwhelming success of this program makes clear: we need to fully fund CUNY, and expand programs like CUNY Reconnect,” she said.
Housing was among the main areas that Adams addressed on Wednesday, with a particular focus on the New York City Housing Authority, the public housing agency which houses roughly half-a-million New Yorkers. NYCHA has suffered from years of underinvestment at every level of government, leading to dilapidated apartments and egregious living conditions that have harmed the health and safety of its residents.
Speaker Adams made an ambitious proposal to ameliorate those conditions by building new public housing developments for existing NYCHA residents on un- or under-used NYCHA-owned land. The new higher-density developments would require city, state, and federal funding and would also include other affordable and mixed-income housing, she said.
“I’m under no illusion that this is an easy or straightforward idea,” she acknowledged. “In fact, this ambitious task would require resources and close coordination from DC, Albany, and Gracie Mansion. But I present it even with its complexities, because we can’t keep tinkering around the edges of the status quo and expect to deliver transformative change that residents deserve.”
Adams also further teased the impending introduction of a Fair Housing Framework bill, which she first announced in December, to set local affordable housing production goals, and expressed her support for proposals in Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget plan that will help build more housing in the city including through mandatory local growth targets, converting office space to housing, and eliminating the floor-area-ratio cap in the city. And she said the city should update its Mandatory Inclusionary Housing policy, approved under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, to require more deeply affordable housing.
The speaker also pledged to strengthen programs to help preserve existing rent-regulated apartments and to expand affordable homeownership, and new legislation to make it easier for low-income families to receive rental assistance vouchers that prevent evictions.
In keeping with the theme of the speech, Adams announced several workforce development proposals. She said the Council would work to reduce barriers to entry for civil service jobs and announced a new Social Work Fellows program that would cover tuition for college graduates and create a pipeline for them to join the city’s mental health workforce. She also said the Council will make a “multi-million-dollar” investment to create three more workforce development centers at NYCHA developments. And she promised legislation to ban non-compete agreements for workers.
The speaker is also proposing several economic development measures to boost small businesses, revive industrial manufacturing, and create programs for underrepresented entrepreneurs.
She proposed updates to the city’s manufacturing zoning to incentivize businesses to set up shop in abandoned industrial zones. “We are sitting on industrial goldmines that have been neglected,” she said. That proposal would be accompanied by legislation mandating citywide industrial planning, she said, “so we can transition away from fossil fuels towards green energy, support job growth and citywide needs.”
She said the Council would partner with Community Development Financial Institutions to build programs that will provide capital to under-represented entrepreneurs, Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs), and small businesses. And she announced support for NYCHA residents that own their own small businesses.
Benefits for low-income New Yorkers were also on Speaker Adams’ agenda as she announced expanded guaranteed income programs and an expansion of the Fair Fares half-priced MetroCard program to New Yorkers with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level, effectively doubling the number of low-income New Yorkers who are eligible (the cutoff is currently at or below 100% of the poverty level, meaning an annual income of $14,580 for an individual).
Adams also announced that the Council would push to expand year-round public access to swimming pools, invest in free swimming and lifeguard training programs, and pass legislation requiring the city to find locations for new public pools.
On healthcare, Adams announced a new mobile healthcare hub for deliveristas, the food delivery workers that were essential during the pandemic and whose number has skyrocketed as New Yorkers order more and more delivery. She also said the Council would expand funding for healthy food markets for NYCHA developments and would push the city to expand farmer’s markets year-round.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
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