Recovery

The core of our recovery plan is meaningful economic relief and job pathways for the most vulnerable New Yorkers, a plan for small businesses to reopen and stay open, and a green future.

Kathryn is ready to lead the best city in the world to a better tomorrow.

New York City is the best city in the world. Our public spaces, cultural institutions, and community infrastructure make New York City the ultimate gathering place for the most creative people. Our park system is as big as the entire city of Boston. Our three library systems have more than 200 branches, and our countless cultural institutions and arts organizations will soon again provide world-class entertainment.

That thing that makes us New York hasn’t gone away. The people who started those restaurants, theaters, salons, bodegas, dance clubs, gyms, and museums – all their creative talent is still here. They just need help. That’s why the core of our recovery plan is meaningful economic relief and job pathways for the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

Our strength lies in our ability to evolve. The pandemic has taught us that we can move quickly. Restaurants created outdoor dining overnight – a process that would have taken months before this year. We will build on the success of open streets and outdoor dining to create more vibrant outdoor spaces to power our recovery in every single neighborhood. We will make it easier for all our small businesses, particularly our restaurants, to thrive.

The next mayor has the opportunity to lead New York into a green future. Kathryn has a bold vision for our recovery that is rooted in a commitment to addressing climate change. New York will not look exactly like it did before the pandemic, and that’s a good thing.

Kathryn has been tapped to solve our greatest challenges in times of crisis during her entire career. She has overseen $8 billion in capital construction. She has managed thousands of City employees and built innovative programs to serve New Yorkers. This is not a time for on-the-job training. Kathryn Garcia is ready to lead the best city in the world to a better tomorrow. 

Recovery

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Meaningful economic relief and job pathways for the most vulnerable New Yorkers
  • Free childcare for children aged 0-3 for families making under 70K a year
  • A single small business City Permit to eliminate bureaucracy
  • Launch CrowdsourceNYC to provide zero interest microloans to small businesses
  • Universal broadband for all
  • Restore 24/7 Subway service
  • Fix the broken bureaucracy of City government
  • Deliver excellent basic services and improve and beautify our public spaces and parks

Reopen to Stay Open: Our Plan to Restart NYC’s Local Economy

  • Create a single small business City Permit. Any new business with less than 100 employees will be able to fill out just one simple, streamlined permit to get up and running. You will be able to apply for that City Permit on your smartphone. Any new or returning business that applies for a City Permit will get a response within 1 month of submitting the application.
  • Launch CrowdsourceNYC, a fund that provides zero interest microloans to small businesses with 20 employees or fewer, starting with anchor investments from the City’s pension fund and support from the private sector.
  • Reimagine how the City uses public space to give local businesses and art organizations a bigger footprint in their communities--by reforming our concessions and public art permitting process to unlock hundreds of thousands of square feet of public space for arts and culture. Let restaurants and bars serve drinks outdoors in designated areas nearby their shops.
  • Develop a partnership with streaming services to livestream On and Off Broadway shows and other performance art to help give actors, dancers and musicians more opportunity to bring New York theater into the homes of all New Yorkers.
  • Give all local businesses a full year of fine and fee relief during the first year of the administration and launch a Small Business Block Party series in every borough.
  • Make the City the biggest customer of local NYC businesses, temporarily shifting more of our spending to small purchases right here in New York to keep businesses afloat as tourism and office workers come back.
  • Launch RediscoverNYC, a campaign encouraging New Yorkers to visit the beautiful parts of the city they have never been to. You can spend your entire life here and still discover new hidden gems everyday. We will use advertising space on our buildings, buses, subways and airports to promote RediscoverNYC and provide free advertising to local art non-profits, theaters and other cultural organizations.
  • Support restaurants and restaurant workers: make outdoor dining permanent, cap third party app commissions, support emergency cash assistance funding programs for undocumented workers, work with insurers to maximize business interruption claim pay-outs, explore rent stabilization for commercial spaces, and provide tax incentives for landlords to forgive back rent and renegotiate new leases.

Meaningful economic relief and job pathways for the most vulnerable New Yorkers

  • Support working parents by providing free childcare for children ages 1-3 for households making less than $70k per year. We are in a childcare crisis, with 1 in 4 women considering stepping back from their careers. Free childcare is essential to get New Yorkers back to work.
  • Universal broadband for all. It’s time to move on from a handful of companies monopolizing the market with high prices and low speeds; universal broadband is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
  • Create a pipeline from CUNY colleges and trade schools to jobs, including guaranteeing graduates of our trade schools a path to City employment, working with the private sector to offer 10,000 paid internships to high school students, and subsidizing wages for youth who face barriers to employment.
  • Expand the summer youth employment program to include partnerships with the private sector, in particular those industries that make our City exceptional: finance, arts, technology, healthcare, film and media.
  • Restore 24/7 subway service.
  • Expand access to benefits and savings accounts for freelance workers and undocumented New Yorkers - these workers are essential to New York City and deserve a strong safety net - guaranteed by New York State.

Deliver excellent basic services and make our public spaces and parks delightful

  • Restore funding to make our public spaces delightful and deliver clean and beautiful streets, sidewalks, and parks.
  • Increase parks funding to 1% of the City budget, and baseline funding to pay for additional gardeners, City Park Workers, Urban Park Rangers, and Parks Enforcement Patrol Officers and support the work of GreenThumb gardens and forest management activities.
  • Renovate 100 neighborhood parks in the communities hit hardest by COVID-19 and expand access to open space by opening up all schoolyards to the public on weekends to give New Yorkers more opportunities to play, exercise, and have fun!
  • Breathe life into vacant storefronts through a program to support businesses that closed during the pandemic, commission murals and positive graffiti and support pop-up uses by the community and cultural groups.
  • Declare a war on scaffolding to take down scaffolding that’s been up for years, open up sightlines, and improve public safety.
  • Rezone areas with vacant and or outdated commercial space to promote vibrant mixed-use neighborhoods with permit other uses, including affordable housing and community healthcare facilities.
  • Deliver excellent execution on the nuts and bolts of city government services - sanitation, fire, parks, water, and schools -- to help bring back employment and tourism.
  • Expand community healthcare options to make sure that residents of Elmhurst and the Upper East Side alike have equal access to quality health services, including primary care, specialists, and emergency care.

Fix the broken bureaucracy of City government

  • You get what you measure. Across the board, we will take a data-driven and metrics-focused approach that will make our priorities clear to everyone, from the public to city management staff. The Mayor’s Management Report won’t just be a check the box exercise every quarter.
  • Eliminate rules that have no relationship to risk – City agencies need to spend their time delivering results for New Yorkers, not checking the box on outdated and unnecessary rules that do nothing to protect New Yorkers
  • Redesign contracts with partners to be performance-based to rely on the creativity and ingenuity of our partners to deliver results for New Yorkers.
  • Humanize the process of dealing with government services. Programs and permits will be re-designed with and for the people they serve to be simple and accessible in multiple languages. We will start with a small business City Permit, the rental assistance process and enrolling a student in 3k, pre-k, or k-12 education.
  • Invest in the City’s digital infrastructure to make more programs accessible without multiple trips to government offices that require time away from work or school to access services.
  • Complete renovation projects faster so all New Yorkers can enjoy world-class libraries, schools, parks, and community centers. We will complete 95% of community infrastructure projects in four years or less, by creating a new Citywide authority to select best value contractors and using innovative capital delivery methods. We will also introduce a CapitalStat program to get stalled capital projects back on track.
  • Break the bureaucratic logjam created by a fragmented permitting system and replace it with a unified approval process for capital projects with more opportunities for self-certification.
  • Fix the broken process for funding capital projects at our arts and cultural institutions to ensure non profits receive down payments with amount based on the scope and size--so that our non-profits don’t have to go into debt to accept City funding.

Recovery x Climate

  • Inclusive growth with a focus on greening projects and biotech. We will advocate for green new deal and infrastructure stimulus dollars to pursue building upgrades for climate resiliency, particularly while vacancy rates are high, and incentivize growth within the biotech sector, including the Brookdale science corridor.
  • Nurture the life sciences industry in New York City to create well-paying jobs, spur local scientific discoveries, and encourage entrepreneurship in this growing industry.
  • Learn more about our climate platform here.

Media Coverage

POLITICO

Kathryn Garcia has a straightforward pitch for why she should be mayor: She “gets shit done.”

HAMODIA

“I want us to grow. We need economic growth. We need to make it so that it’s fair. We need to make sure people are getting jobs in these companies. I’m very supportive of unionization so that you don’t have somebody making $50 million and someone making $15. But I do think you need to have jobs in the city and continue to grow.”

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

““Mayoral hopeful Kathryn Garcia appealed to pandemic-weary New York City small business owners Friday with a plan that aims to drastically streamline the city’s permitting processes and expand the city’s outdoor offerings. “Today, to open a restaurant in New York, you need to get permits, file applications, undergo reviews, get inspections and receive licenses from up to eight different agencies before you can sell a bowl of soup,” Garcia said. “To restart New York City’s local economy, we have to change and we have to change fast.”

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