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.

We felt like those were the you know five major focus and underlining themes that are gonna drive the work plan for the year.

Um just you know, we we we knew we we uh identified a lot of new things and initiatives in 25, but like any like everything else, uh it's difficult sometimes to get things off the ground.

And so those things carry over to to the next year.

So we had a lot of those big initiatives that we had started.

You know, we we identified those needs, uh, a lot of planning uh items, a lot of community engagement that we thought we needed to improve on.

We did a lot of environmental uh planning, we approved a new uh green RNR plan last year.

Uh we developed strategies for economic development and different ways to do community engagement and then carrying those over into 26 was it was where we are focusing on actually implementing those ideas.

So on public safety and emergency preparedness, I just highlight a couple things.

So a key initiative was to launch what we call a quarterly public safety advisory meeting.

Uh conveys members of the community alongside leadership from the police, fire department, and public works.

And these meetings will focus on emergency response prevention and the critical infrastructure that keeps this city running.

Um we we had our first one in April.

I think it went well good.

We're gonna tweak it a little bit and hopefully move that meeting around to different parts of the city.

And again, it's it's a uh a way to again another mechanism to engage directly with our uh emergency uh personnel and any issues that anybody might have.

Uh resilient infrastructure.

Uh one of the key initiatives that we did this year was to uh develop a local safety action plan.

It's a data-driven framework that combines traffic safety data with community input to guide safer street design and strengthen the city's eligibility for federal transit infrastructure funding.

So it's a very important initiative, it's actually a tool that gets packaged into any grant applications that are uh that we um send in for much needed traffic uh safety improvements throughout the city.

So uh alongside this L SAP new Neuroshell will convene a local safety advisory committee, which we did.

We launched a comprehensive and inclusive inclusive engagement process, and we actually finalized the plan just recently.

And it's it was actually a part of a recent grant application for Pinebrook Boulevard.

So we we took a look at uh the different corridors that we have in the city.

So Webster Avenue, we have a lot going on on Webster Avenue.

So from Main Street all the way to the Hutchinson River Parkway, we are in the process now of uh designing uh new uh traffic, the replacement of all the existing traffic signals and pedestrian crossings throughout the entire quarter.

Uh that is currently in design.

We hope to finish that uh by the end of the year and implementation and construction next year.

Added to that, we're going to analyze a potential traffic signal at the intersection of Glenmore Drive and Bonair.

We added that to the scope, and we have various other initiatives within the corridor to address uh safety concerns on parks and recreation facility improvements over at Ruby D park.

Um we're in the process now of modifying, rehabbing a kiosk building there to make that as a safety uh presence there within the park.

Uh we're presently our parks department staff has done a great job getting quotes to rehab the children's climbing and play area.

Um we're going to update, we've updated some park lighting, and we could continue to do that, electricity within the park, uh cleaning some some signage there, um, installing some missing signs.

Um so just keep keep on the upkeep of that park, and eventually uh we're gonna lead to a development of a revitalization plan for the entire park.

Uh over in Glenwood Lake, it's a dam, it's a New York State registered dam.

Um we had engineering assessments done and some deficiencies noted.

Um we have designed those uh improvements for the dam.

Uh design is actually completed.

Uh we're working uh currently right now with our New York State Dam Safety Division on obtaining a permit to start the construction work, hopefully at the end of this year.

Uh environmental sustainability and stewardship.

Uh just to highlight some of the sort of the major projects that were happening, a green, a really nice project at the IT Center.

Um we have initiated, actually completed a solar feasibility study for solar panels on the roof that determine whether or not we could actually structurally install those, they'll determine that we will uh we are able to install those.

Uh now we'll take it to the next uh step, which is developing a detailed design for the actual uh installation of the actual panels, and hopefully have construction design finished by the end of the third quarter, and construction started at the end of the year.

Another initiative that we embarked last year, major on the sustainability front was uh development of a community forest management plan.

Um it serves as a living document for maintaining the entire city's urban forest, all the trees within the entire city right away.

Um, some major points of the plan here, expanding the urban canopy coverage, enhancing equitable access to urban forest benefits, promoting biodiversity, habitat connectivity, and native species.

We're fostering community engagement, ensuring long-term health of our urban forest, and we're gonna as part of this, we're gonna analyze and revise eventually our city tree ordinance.

We already started, we have a very ambitious goal this year of planting 300 trees throughout the city.

We have identified those locations.

We actually started that work uh and that will continue this spring, and then we'll pick it up again in the fall.

Development opportunity prosperity.

Just to you know, let everybody know we we were in the process of eminent domaining the Agadorn building down here in the main street, beginning of Main Street.

Uh we finalized that uh purchase in April.

Um it's we're really excited about that.

Um we're looking to really um uh revive that building as a long-term, hopefully cultural anchor that supports the downtown revitalization and equitable access to the arts and culture.

Um it is a neoclassical building.

Uh it is for a former Carnegie Library.

So we're in the process of right now just securing some initial contracts just to like kind of clean it up, get it into good shape, secure it, and we've uh actually have submitted for funding grant applications for National Endowment Arts to pursue that eventual planning and programming for the building.

Another acquisition that we finalized almost at the same time was this 625 North Avenue, that CVS facility, former CVS.

We would develop a RFEI, which is a request for expressions of interest again to develop that pro that property as a you know a community benefit.

Um we're really excited about that.

We're gonna do almost the same thing there, address the immediate concerns there while we look to look to the future and hopefully develop an RFP that's gonna provide that community benefit.

Uh black box theater.

Uh we got a lot of work going on there.

Um we've actually identified the operator, the operator is on contract right now with the city uh in the middle of performing some interior renovations in uh hope to activate the facility.

Uh we think by either the end of the year we'll be finished with the construction and hopefully programming uh arts and culture and all our uh creative educational entertainment uh beginning in 2027.

So that's really really important.

Uh any black box theater is so important to any uh any city and especially a city like ours.

So that's a really uh really important uh uh thing that's going on in the downtown community building.

Um last year we launched a uh non-for-profit grant program that invited proposals from um local organizations, all with the purpose of enhancing the community well-being, promote economic equity, and support impactful non-for-profit initiatives that improve the quality of life for our residents.

So, you know, I it was something that we kind of thought of.

We personally we we had a lot of people coming into the to our city manager's office with a lot of great ideas.

Um, and it was unfortunate with you know, the timing of when people came in, budgets were passed already, there was no money allocated.

Um, so we said, you know, maybe we need a structure here, develop a structure and a process that we could um invite as many organizations as we can and identify where an organization's needs would benefit and tie into uh what we see as uh something that would benefit the city.

So we developed this program.

Uh it was great.

Uh we we kind of identified different focus areas that we thought were important.

Uh we wound up uh giving 12 grants out, total of 100,000 dollars.

So hopefully uh we'll see the benefits of that.

Uh another initiative uh that we uh funded this year and starting is the participatory budgeting.

Um it's a pilot program.

It's gonna, you know, the with the intent that it will empower residents uh to submit ideas and vote on projects that would reflect what you want in your neighborhood.

Uh nice program.

We had a pilot it this year.

We just developed uh established the participatory budgeting steering committee.

Um that was just uh literally established like a week or two ago.

Um they had their first meeting.

Uh there'll be a rules book.

We're gonna use the NeurShell High School as a pilot for this program.

Uh we got a there's been uh great cooperation with the school, students, teachers, um, and we're going to you know establish this framework on you know gathering ideas, um you know, analyzing those ideas, voting on those ideas, and eventually implementing those those improvements.

And we're gonna keep it to capital type improvements, um, and it will pilot it in the high school and hopefully next year we'll take it citywide.

Uh a lot of community engagement for 2026.

Uh there'll be um committees and associations uh working with us to uh celebrate the America 250th anniversary.

Uh we're going to have a summer of soccer, uh, some really nice events uh with the FIFA soccer tournament that's happening in a couple weeks.

Uh we're partnering with our bid on those activations.

Uh so there's a lot to lot to happen with the uh community engagement.

Uh continuing off workforce development.

Um and we've instituted as part of this a rebate program that would incentivize, incentivize a local hiring on city contracts.

So we actually built this into the boilerplate of our contracts that would incentivize a contractor who was awarded a city contract for a lot of our work to actually pull from this pool of workforce development.

So just another way of you know just uh improving and uh for our local residents here of up job opportunities within city uh run contracts.

Uh amplification of the city communications was something important for us that we we thought was um needed.

Um we started uh various council recap videos.

Uh we started something called you know faces of the city highlight the great work that a lot of our uh employees do.

Uh we've hired two additional social media coordinators to help uh social media is is the way to go now.

It's it's happened.

It's how it's really how the message is the primary media of how medium of how the message is going out.

Um realizing that you know video and audio content is very important, so we've kind of upping our game with uh city communications.

Uh city council updates, so you know, just again, just another uh avenue and another mechanism to let uh council know, and as well as our residents know of what's going on and really updating them on these initiatives.

So we started a monthly uh update to city council.

We've got uh one coming out soon.

They're on our website, it's great information to kind of give you real-time updates on all the initiatives, a lot of the things that we've identified within the work plan.

And then we have our continued initiatives.

Um a lot of things, like I said, we started in 2025, but we're gonna continue over in 2026.

Um here downtown.

We've we still have an active contract with our uh two-way conversion.

Uh took a little uh hiatus there because of some design issues, but hopefully in the next couple weeks, we'll restart that work again with the installation of new foundations for the new traffic signals.

The actual conversion of Main Street and uh Ugunat uh honestly is not gonna happen until 2027, and you'll hear a lot about that before that happens.

There'll be a lot of planning, a lot of community engagement, um, and a lot of uh a lot of details uh will be given uh before that was to happen.

Uh we're doing street lighting upgrades, so our DPW department has already ordered some uh brand new fixtures for all our ornamental street lights.

Uh so we'll start those replacements pretty soon, so hopefully we have nice bright streets pretty soon.

Uh we've our EV charging expansion at New Rock is on the way, uh climate policy evaluation and heat emergency plan.

And these are just the some you know various initiatives that we uh continuing.

So it's not only it's not only what we highlighted here, it's really a lot of a continuation of what we started in 2025.

And that's kind of the theme.

We started a lot last year, we identified some new stuff this year.

So the goal uh this for this year is kind of land the planes, make things happen, and uh you know, put shovels in the ground.

We have a lot of stormwater mitigation work throughout the city, a lot of projects, uh our parks are getting redone, uh roads are getting redone, so uh it's really landing the planes and and actually um you know doing a lot of work.

There's a lot of projects I didn't mention.

The link is another project, uh major initiative that's happening.

Uh we're right at the finish line there.

We're getting a contract out, and hopefully start work uh sometime this year if we could get through some uh a little bit of uh the agreements that we have to get with the with the state.

Um that's it.

So thanks.