In a sweep, all five proposals on the back of New Yorkers’ ballots passed by a large margin Tuesday evening, giving a boost to Mayor Zohran Mamdani in his first year in office.
With nearly all precincts reporting, each ballot proposal received at least 61% of the vote.
The questions, drawn up by the Mamdani administration’s government efficiency commission over the summer, concern use of public space, city contracting, street safety, building permitting and the city’s rainy day fund.
“New Yorkers informed these ballot proposals from the very beginning,” Patrick Gaspard, chair of the commission, said in a press release Tuesday evening. “Now, New Yorkers have made clear that they should be law.”
Each proposal is an amendment to the City Charter — the local constitution defining the powers of government. This year, most of them involved cutting some aspects of public review processes to get city projects approved quicker. The last proposal sets up a rainy day fund for the city.
Overall, city voters had cast more than 1.9 million ballots across the five boroughs, according to the city Board of Elections.
Of all five boroughs, only one had a majority of voters reject the five proposals: Staten Island.
“Tonight, New Yorkers voted for a government that moves as fast as they do,” Mamdani said in the release. “From opening outdoor dining faster to speeding up street safety projects to accelerating housing production, we are cutting red tape that will directly address the affordability crisis and help New Yorkers stay in the city they love.”
Among the five proposals, voters approved a charter amendment, Proposal 1, that will shorten the process of getting approved for projects using public space, including outdoor dining structures such as roadside cafes and street sheds. Applying for one can take up to eight months currently, but through the new application system, the process should be cut down to approximately two months.
They also said yes to Proposal 2 that gives a new power to the mayor to approve contracts over $5 million more quickly.
Proposal 3 concerns transportation projects and city-owned property.
Currently, the city Department of Transportation must notify local elected officials, community boards and the police department before implementing transit projects. Now, in some urgent situations, and when the DOT finds that the project is necessary, the agency can start working before notifying other groups.
Selling or leasing some city-owned property will also require less public reviews with the goal of speeding up sales: Instead of the seven-month process of getting transactions approved through multiple agencies, they’ll go through an expedited one, allowing different reviewers to go over it concurrently. The final review by the City Council is also removed from the process.
That proposal faced opposition from preservation groups who urged New Yorkers to vote against it for fear that it would take land away from the public with minimal review processes. Washington Heights resident Ken Roberts told The City Reporter outside of his poll site on Tuesday that he voted against it.
“I understand a lot of proposals were looking out for small businesses, but I know that if a big corporation wants something, they come in and they take it,” he said.
A Flatbush native, the 31-year-old added he’s especially skeptical about the public land aspect of the proposal after seeing deed theft strip people of their homes in Central Brooklyn.
Proposal 4 creates a centralized permitting hub for New Yorkers looking to get a construction project approved, among other changes aiming to speed up approvals for building projects.
And with Proposal 5, Mamdani’s giving the city a plan for a piggy bank, containing 12% of the city’s previous year’s tax revenue in the event of a recession.
Under the change, by May 2027, the Office of Management and Budget, alongside the Comptroller, will have to publish a plan for making deposits if the fund is below that target.
The city can’t withdraw more than 50% of the fund, unless the mayor has a “compelling fiscal reason,” according to the efficiency commission.
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