Early voting in New York City's 2025 general election starts this Saturday, Oct. 25th. I'm writing two blog posts sharing my thinking and recommendations, one about the six ballot proposals (this one), one about the judicial races (a bunch of people were grateful for my recommendations for judges in the primary).

How I'll be voting:

1. (statewide): new forest land in Adirondack Park - strong yes
2. (NYC): "Fast Track Affordable Housing to Build More Across the City" - yes
3. (NYC): "Simplify Review of Modest Housing and Infrastructure Projects" - yes
4. (NYC): "Establish an Affordable Housing Appeals Board with Council, Borough and Citywide Representation" - weak yes
5. (NYC): digitize & centralize official city map - weak no
6. (NYC): "Move Local Elections to Presidential Election Years" - weak no

At the end I also list resources - others' summaries and positions.

Proposal 1: new forest land in Adirondack Park

Official NYC Votes summary.

Decades ago, for the Winter Olympics near Lake Placid, we built a 1,039-acre sports complex in the Adirondack forest preserve. The legal status of that land is thus screwed up, because that is not forest! It has buildings and ski trails on it! It's hard to maintain and improve the sports complex (which is still being used for events) because it's on land that, on paper, is Forest Preserve.

So this proposal (supported by the ecology group Adirondacks Council) would unsnarl the status of the trails and facilities on that land; also, this proposal requires New York State to add an additional 2,500 acres of forest land to the Adirondack forest preserve.

I spoke with a local resident who is for this and said it should have happened decades ago. An Indivisible volunteer I know researched this issue and agrees.

My vote: STRONG YES.

Proposal 2: "Fast Track Affordable Housing to Build More Across the City"

Official NYC Votes summary.

Here we get into the really controversial proposals, 2-4, which aim to modify the balance of power regarding real estate development in NYC.

Others' summaries and discussions (links at the end) go into more detail on these. My incredibly simplified summary: we have way way way less housing than we need (for existing residents, and for people who need to flee here). We are abominably slow at approving proposed buildings. And individual City Council members have nearly invincible power to say no to stuff in their districts. This is a key reason there's astonishing disparity between the rates of new housing (and of density) among the different districts. But the existing process also gives local residents leverage: they can negotiate with real estate developers, and demand that deals include investments in neighborhood benefits (e.g. parks).

There are many reasons, better and worse, for people to be wary of new proposed real estate development in their neighborhoods. "This project would turn parkland into a casino." "High-density housing might attract people I'm racist against." "Expensive homes for wealthy people will displace residents and erode neighborhood attributes we value." "Water, transit, and other infrastructure can't handle the population that's here already." "To build this you must destroy a precious existing thing." "Duplicitous developers will likely announce a plan to get consensus, then renege." "Tall buildings are unpleasant to look at." And many other reasons! I know I am oversimplifying!

Proposals 2-4 provide a faster way to get approval to build housing that is "affordable." "Affordable" is a legal term here that specifically means "targeted to future tenants earning 40%, 60% or 80% of the area median income, a federal designation for affordable housing development" per THE CITY. (This definition means that sometimes local residents can't really afford to live in "Affordable" housing, which is a reason that negotiation leverage can matter -- demanding that some proportion of rental apartments be set at, e.g., the 40% price.)

The "fast track" - bypassing the City Council and the mayor's veto option - would only apply in the 12 (out of 59) Community Districts that produce the least affordable housing. This is a way to counterbalance the citywide disparity I mentioned.

This is why you may have received (taxpayer-funded!!!) paper mail from the City Council darkly warning against "Mayor Adams's" ballot proposals, or visited the anti-these-proposals website they made (with taxpayer money!), or caught their press conference which used city resources to urge voters to reject the proposals ("City Council members slam ballot proposals at rally they say wasn’t electioneering"). Mayors, who appoint a bunch of the people in the fast-track process (and the expedited process in Proposal #3), would have more power too, relative to the City Council -- but then again, I think the City Council misused its power in how it's campaigned against these proposals, so that makes me averse to protecting their power!

I am pretty torn on these; see the analyses below for the nitty-gritty arguments for and against. At heart I think the question for 2-4 is: are you more concerned that we're not building enough housing, or that awful developments will ruin existing neighborhoods? There are people I respect on both sides here.

Right now I'm inclined to say that the greater danger is not building enough housing, so I plan to vote yes.

Proposal 3: "Simplify Review of Modest Housing and Infrastructure Projects"

Official NYC Votes summary.

Another land use/how do we do real estate development?/NIMBY vs. YIMBY question. Specifically: shall we expedite review of small changes? To quote the Charter Revision Commission summary:

create a simplified review process, known as the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP), for certain land use changes, including:

• Modest housing proposals that increase residential capacity by no more than 30% or allow housing with a standard height no taller than 45 feet;

• Acquisition, disposition, and City Map changes related to affordable housing; and

• Infrastructure and resiliency projects, like projects to prevent flooding by raising the grade of a street and to build solar panels on public land.

I'm influenced here by the housing activist Hell Gate NYC interviewed who said: "These are really modest projects that have modest changes." OK, making modest change easier sounds good to me, so I plan to vote yes.

Proposal 4: "Establish an Affordable Housing Appeals Board with Council, Borough and Citywide Representation"

Official NYC Votes summary.

This is one of the really controversial ones.

Quoting City & State NY:

Individual council members also often have a lot of sway over how the chamber moves due to an informal process known as member deference. With some exceptions, this means the chamber generally defers to what the local member wants when deciding the fate of an application in their district.

"Member deference" is informal. It isn't a law! It's a custom! But it's a freaking ironclad custom. The Charter Revision Commission report says "At the time of writing, no housing proposal has been approved through [our existing procedures] without the support of the local councilmember in 16 years." Quoting the Hell Gate NYC article:

To rebut accusations of NIMBYism, Speaker Adams recently noted that the council passes 93 percent of all housing development applications that come before it. But Casey Berkovitz, a spokesperson for the charter review commission, told Hell Gate that this percentage doesn't capture the true number of housing developments that are killed, because builders know there is no point in spending money in a district with a councilmember who routinely shuts down any plans of development.

"We have heard, both in public testimony and privately, from people who build affordable housing, that the first thing they do when someone approaches them about building affordable housing is they look up who this local councilmember is, and if that councilmember is not someone who's going to be amenable to building affordable housing in their district, whether that's out of malice or anything else, they don't go any further at all in pursuing the project," Berkovitz said.

So this proposal would establish an appeals board that can override a recalcitrant Councilmember.

And I am annoyed enough about member deference that this feels like a good idea. But! Hell Gate NYC reports:

"I just don't know if getting rid of the mayor's veto and replacing that veto with this three-person team of the speaker, the borough president and the mayor would actually change the way that member deference works, or if it's just going to flow through different power channels and become more concentrated by giving the borough presidents more controls," Mironova said.

Argh! Good arguments on both sides. I think here the thing swaying my vote is annoyance at the City Council using taxpayer funds to try to sway my vote, and thus I am voting a weak yes.

Proposal 5: digitize & centralize official city map

Official NYC Votes summary.

The official city map is a bunch of paper, which is obsolete and ridiculous, and I think digitization is likely overdue. But also, "Currently, the City Map is managed by five Topographical Bureaus in each Borough President’s office." This proposal would consolidate this work into the city's Department of City Planning, which is harder for residents to get in touch with and ask questions of. And a friend of mine who has worked on relevant civic tech says there exist good up-to-date, accessible digital maps of relevant city data right now, and we don't need to rush through this proposal to digitize the official map and centralize it.

I plan to vote a weak no.

Proposal 6: "Move Local Elections to Presidential Election Years"

Official NYC Votes summary.

This would increase turnout for sure, but would it actually increase how many people vote in local elections? I spoke with a pollworker who characterized many voters' reactions to a multi-page ballot as not just ballot fatigue but "panic." And last night at an FAQ NYC event, journalist Harry Siegel said that he and political scientist Christina Greer thought this proposal was a terrible idea; local news coverage of the local races would be thoroughly drowned out by attention to the national election, especially Presidential.

I am not interested in blaming eligible nonvoters by saying that low-turnout elections attract a more informed and thus more deserving electorate; I've heard someone say that and that's gross. This proposal suggests a structural change to aid voters in remembering to vote. I think we do need those sorts of structural changes, e.g., making it easier to vote absentee, expanding early voting hours, improving Board of Elections processes, etc.

With that in mind, my vote: weak no.

Links

Many people and organizations have written about the ballot proposals.

For deep detail, you can read the Charter Revision Commission report itself which explains their reasoning and the research behind all five city proposals.

Summaries/analyses by journalists/policy analysts:

Marina Samuel in THE CITY: "The 6 Ballot Questions New Yorkers Will See This November": if you only read one, this is a good one, concisely analyzing each proposal.

Sahalie Donaldson in City & State NY: "What’s the deal with the 2025 NYC ballot proposals? Six proposals stand before me, but only three are vehemently opposed by the City Council.": also good. For each proposal, quickly sums up the context, what each proposal would do, and "How does the City Council feel?"

Christopher Robbins in Hell Gate NYC: "A Crash Course in the 3 Controversial Housing Ballot Proposals": Helped me a lot in thinking about the likely second-order effects of, for instance, subverting the member deference tradition. Paywalled, but if you care about NYC politics, it's worth paying $7/month to read Hell Gate's reporting and analysis. If you're really torn on Proposals 2, 3, and 4, it may be worth paying $7 for a single month just to read this article. Also discussed in the Oct. 17th episode of their free-to-listen podcast.

Vicki Been, Brad Greenburg, and Rohun Iyer at NYU's Furman Center: "What the Charter Revision Commission’s Ballot Proposals May Mean for New York City’s Housing Production". Uses maps, charts, and diagrams well to illustrate the current situation and how these proposals would change it, and explains what "modest projects" (Proposal 3) would include.

Errol Louis's column in New York magazine: "The Ballot Question That May Matter More Than the Mayoral Race" (also paywalled) about the four housing-related proposals. "Voters can’t force the next mayor to take action on housing, but we can give him an important tool to speed up the process." Includes valuable background context on how housing development in NYC is incredibly slow, e.g.,

That’s putting it mildly. During the 1920s, according to the Vital City think tank, New York built nearly 730,000 homes, more than quadruple the city’s current, anemic pace. Even in the 1960s, production moved twice as fast as at present. By comparison, project approvals take only 30 days in Houston, compared to 15 months in San Francisco, according to a RAND study — but in New York, it takes an average of 2.5 years to secure zoning changes before a project can break ground, which adds an estimated 11 to 16 percent to the cost of building housing. There is broad agreement that these delays contribute to our current 1.4 percent vacancy rate, the lowest level since 1968.

Eve Rosenblum in the Columbia Spectator: "Three New York City ballot proposals aim to change the affordable housing approval process. Some West Harlem advocates are pushing back." Discusses how residents leverage the current system to get real estate developers to invest in key infrastructure & neighborhood benefits.

Mariana De Jesús-Szendrey in City Limits (which focuses on affordable housing): "The Land Use Charter Changes That Might Be on Your Ballot This Fall" (July 8th). Explains that one reason the City Council is peeved is because the Council didn't get to put its own proposals on the ballot. Also relevant in City Limits: Patrick Spauster's "What NYC’s Next Mayor Can (And Can’t) Do About Housing Affordability" (July 7th) and "The 12 Communities Where Mayor Adams’ Charter Commission Could ‘Fast Track’ Affordable Housing" (July 24th).

Positions by local organizations include:

• League of Women Voters: "LWVNYC supports a YES vote for Ballot Proposals #2, #3, #5 and #6 and provides pros and cons for ballot question #4 as the League does not have a position addressing this issue."
• Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club
• LiveOn NY

as well as several links in the journalists' analyses/summaries. Please feel free to leave links to other good resources in the comments - or your own thoughts, including disagreement, as long as you're being productive and not just insulting or dismissive.

Now I'll try to finish up the judicial candidates roundup. There are only seven competitive judicial races in NYC this fall (that is, races where there are actually more candidates than open positions) so those are the ones I'll be writing about. They're all in Manhattan, Queens, or Staten Island; no Bronx or Brooklyn judicial elections are competitive this year. I aim to get that post out by 9am tomorrow (as early voting starts).