Good evening, everyone.

My name is Yudira Ramos Herbert, and I have the distinct privilege of serving as the mayor of our amazing city.

And it's really a pleasure to welcome you to tonight's community meeting for District 4.

I want to begin by thanking our dedicated professional staff who are here with us tonight, led by our city manager, each of our department commissioners and staff members.

So many who are here representing City Hall after a full day of work.

They've come out to get to know and connect with each of you.

They work tirelessly on behalf of our entire city, and I'm so grateful for their partnership and service.

So please let's give our staff a round of applause for taking the time to be here tonight.

We also want to thank the library and its team for hosting us this evening and making this event possible.

I want to recognize a few other other elected officials from well, Senator Shelley Mayor's office is represented by Luisa Choa and Christine.

Hello.

And you will have the treat of hearing from your council rep Shane Auschenloy in a couple minutes.

We've gathered here tonight with one clear goal to foster productive dialogue and ensure that every resident has the chance to engage directly with the people working on the issues that impact your neighborhood.

Your city, the run of show after I finish up, your city council rep, um, councilmember Ashloye will spend a few minutes sharing his priorities for the district.

Following that, our city manager Wilfredo Melendez will provide an overview of the city's 2026 work plan, highlighting the projects, initiatives, and improvements that particularly impact District 4.

Once they are finished, you will have the opportunity to stand up and speak with each of our department commissioners who will be available at individual stations to speak directly with you.

So whether you have a specific concern about public works, public safety, parks, HR, questions about registering your dog, taxes, finance, feel free to check in with as many offices as time permits to ask your focus conversation and questions.

We piloted this format last year at four different meetings, just like this, in fact, at in this room for this district.

And overall, we heard from many residents.

It's uh it's a nice way to create small conversations, giving space for real dialogue so that concerns aren't lost in the crowd and everyone can be heard.

So thank you for showing up for caring about your community and for being a part of the work that makes New Michelle stronger.

I am now going to pass it over to your council rep, Shane Oshanoy.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you so much for coming out tonight.

Everyone had a work day today, so you know, just coming out on a work night is a lot, and we're very grateful to have you here.

Um we want to increase engagement.

That is the the number one mission of tonight.

Uh, we want to introduce you to the people that are on the front lines every day from the buildings department to the police department to the parks department, just right in front of you, you know, getting the work done that you're requesting on a regular basis.

And if you have any, you know, we also want to cut out the noise.

So there are a lot of voices that are stronger in the room than others.

So we want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to get the very specific questions that they have heard.

Um, and you know, as far as our priorities are specifically my priorities, looking at District 4.

I feel like kind of the maintenance guy.

There's a lot of cleanup that we need to do and that we are doing that we're moving initiative for initiatives forward on.

Um, so we'll be looking at Church Street soon for what kind of intersection that we could create around the Clinton and Church uh pedestrian walkways.

We're we're looking at a very myopic level on the street on how we can get the things that you need done.

Uh on Locust, we're looking at our sidewalks uh in Glenwood Lake.

We're having major conversations about how to partner with our state senators on uh protecting the families that are going to uh Daniel Webster elementary school.

Uh we to today is the day to get into the weeds.

So if you have very particular questions about your block, about your neighborhood, you know, this is the opportunity to get those questions done, and that increases our engagement.

It gets us all on the same page, so we all know what's going on.

It's not a voice shouting into the wilderness.

Uh it doesn't feel like other meetings that are just public squares where we just all we can do is listen.

This is an opportunity for us to have dialogue and for you to get the things that you need done done.

Um, I've I'm just very grateful to our city team again because they're so massively responsive, you know, um, getting the potholes filled, getting the streets paid, getting, you know, making interventions in different parks for you know uh uh our little critter friends that we're trying to get rid of.

But all of the hard problems that we're trying to address, um, our entire team is out here to address them tonight.

So thank you.

Uh thank you, mayor.

Thank you, councilman.

Um just want to I'll I'll go over quickly the uh 2026 work plan, but I definitely encourage everybody to look at the the complete work plan.

This is really an abridged version, but there's a lot more to it.

Just look a little bit what goes into the making of the work plan, and just to just to reiterate what the councilman said and uh and the mayor, I want to thank our staff, an incredible staff.

I got the privilege to to work with these professionals every day, and they make my uh work a lot easier.

Um, so um, and it's uh a really uh a good thing that they're all available here, so I won't take too much time because really the the purpose is really to engage and have dialogue because I don't know if we have an opportunity ever like this to have uh the whole staff here in one spot.

So um so each year, like around budget time or so uh for the next year, we start thinking about initiatives and priorities for the next year.

Um so we took a last year we took a very hard um look at not only our departmental priorities, but we also wanted to involve council and uh as part of the process and and really to to give us the ideas and the initiatives that they had in mind, and that goes into developing a work plan and eventually a budget to drive those.

So it serves as a roadmap, it I outlines the strategic priorities and the operational steps that we take to achieve our goals, and we focus on the major thing, one of the major themes out of the work plan is always focusing on on improving the quality of life of our residents here at New York.

Um we last year we took a stab at you know, yeah, how do we create the work plan instead of looking at it by department?

Uh we just said what are the major themes that any city as as our city, a growing city should have as part of their underlining themes.

So we uh created these buckets and um public safety, emergency preparedness, a resilient infrastructure, environmental sustainability and stewardship, economic development, opportunity, prosperity and growth, and community building.