The New Rochelle City Council and City Manager Wilfredo Melendez presented the 2026 work plan to residents of Districts 1 and 2 on the evening of May 27, 2026, at the fourth community engagement event of the year. The event featured presentations by Mayor (name not given), Council Members Martha Lopez (District 1) and Al Tarantino (District 2), and City Manager Melendez, followed by a department fair where residents could ask questions of staff from every city department.
We'll just get started in the spirit of just giving as much time for for conversation. I do want to open by thanking all of you for taking the time on a really nice weather day to come and learn more about some of the work plan that the city has for districts one and two. I want to make sure that we give a special like opening round of applause to all of our staff who's here today after hours to engage with you. So I want to extend my gratitude to them for taking the time. Every department is represented here this evening with um with various levels of of leadership within the teams, and so it's a really good opportunity to connect and ask questions around things that you are facing as residents here in New Michelle. Um the format for tonight, I'm after myself, you'll hear from Martha Lopez representing district one and Al Tarantino representing district two. Then we will hear from our city manager, Wilfredo Melendez about the work plan. For me, when I hear work plan, what I hear it as is the budget in action, just the way that the budget will be impacting. Some of what he shares will be citywide, but some of what he'll also share are from projects in districts one and two. After that, then you'll have an opportunity to speak with all of the departments here. This is our fourth event for this year, and the feedback from the last three is that it's been great to sort of ask a question about your tax bill, maybe check in about registering your dog, asking a question about I don't know, pothole, sorry, Commissioner, um, or connecting with PDE. In other words, you can kind of really engage with a lot of different departments and get some good information. And for our staff, I think it's great that they hear directly from residents um what their concerns are so that they can consider your feedback as they develop policy and continue their excellent service to our city. So I'm gonna step aside and open the floor up to Martha Lopez. Thank you so much, Madam Mayor. Hi, good evening. And uh as our mayor was saying, this is an opportunity for you to go to each table and really speak to them and ask them about your concerns about your needs. It is very important because I do get many phone calls on a day daily basis, and actually I was just speaking to the Department of Economic Development about uh a problem that we were having at the Hageton building, and uh when I spoke to some of my constituents, they said we have already spoken to them. And uh he said to me, we are taking care of that. So it is extremely important that you let us know what your needs are so that we can attend to all of those needs. And I'm gonna be here the whole evening, so please come and talk to me if you want to do it privately, if you want to do it you know, publicly, I would be more than happy to speak to you. Thank you. Thank you, Martha. Thank you, Yudira. Um I wanna first thank everybody for coming tonight. Um we had a nice crowd here tonight. So give yourselves a round of applause. Thank you. Um to add on to what Martha was saying, it's an a perfect opportunity to s to speak to people in all the different departments in in City Hall. I mean, you can go and talk to people and ask them why your taxes are too high if you want. Um I don't know if you'll like the answer, but you'll get an answer. Uh you could also speak to people about uh different things that are being done in town that maybe you don't understand why, and you can ask them those questions also. You can also at the end uh you know, with a question we're gonna do a question and answer or no question and answer. We did last year. We did the same format last year. Same form okay. Okay, okay. Okay. So uh, you know, if you need to meet with me privately afterwards, you wanna you have some questions that you want to answer, I'll be happy to stay and and speak to you. But um we'll start with the uh program now. Thank you. Hello, thank you. Thanks for coming out, thanks for the council, thanks for the mayor. Uh I'm gonna say for the fourth time, definitely a uh great opportunity to take advantage tonight of every department that's here. I want to thank our staff for the excellent work they do every day and um being available tonight um to answer any questions. So um I'm gonna not take too much time through this because really the point is really to engage with our departments, but I'll give you just a brief uh view on the 2026 work plan. Um like the mayor says, it's it's really starts uh we actually gotta start that process for 2027 in a in a couple weeks. It starts in June, takes us through the budget cycle. Um and uh it's an important exercise to really, you know, really look to see what our initiatives and what our concentrations are gonna be on for 2027 and you know make sure that we're budgeted properly for those. Um so every year we do this exercise.