Guiding Principle 1:
Maintain New York City’s financial responsibility
The City of New York finances its capital program primarily through the issuance of bonds. The City remains committed to maintaining sustainable levels of debt in a dynamic fiscal climate while meeting our legal mandates and prioritizing critical life safety projects. We will maintain assets in a state of good repair, which contributes to financial responsibility by mitigating larger construction costs in the future. The City works to maintain realistic annual budget allocations and find savings through coordinated project design, procurement, and construction across City agencies.
Financial Responsibility
Since the late 1980’s, the City and fiscal monitoring agencies measure the debt service burden as a percentage of tax revenues. It is the best measure of debt burden because it puts debt service within the context of the City’s own resources. These credit strengths have a real impact on New Yorkers: a strong demand for bonds reduces the costs of maintaining roads, bridges, schools, and other capital investments, and saves taxpayers money.
This TYCS demonstrates our commitment to meeting legal mandates and enhancing the capacity and quality of our assets. Moreover, it maintains infrastructure that is critical to fostering long-term economic growth and improving quality of life for New Yorkers.
| Fiscal Year | Anticipated Debt Service Obligation ($ in billions) |
Debt Service as a Percentage of Tax Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | $7.1 | 11.4% |
| 2023 | $8.4 | 12.8% |
| 2024 | $8.8 | 13.0% |
| 2025 | $9.4 | 13.5% |
| 2026 | $10.1 | 14.0% |
| 2027 | $10.7 | 14.2% |
| 2028 | $11.4 | 14.5% |
| 2029 | $11.8 | 14.5% |
| 2030 | $11.9 | 14.0% |
| 2031 | $12.4 | 13.9% |
Maintaining our infrastructure in a state of good repair
We work with New Yorkers to help shape the direction of our capital initiatives from the very beginning. Agencies are expanding methods for gathering community input well before projects are identified, to help transform the community’s vision and priorities into new work. For example, NYCHA’s Connected Communities Guidebook was developed through a process of research, analysis, and workshops with residents, designers, and decision-makers, and offers information about how DCP, NYCHA, and other agencies work with residents and community partners to improve public spaces in and around NYCHA campuses.
How capital agencies collaborate with community boards
The New York City Charter mandates an annual solicitation related to community district needs and budget requests from each of the City’s 59 community boards. DCP and OMB recently overhauled this process. By creating an online and standardized submission system, the needs request process is significantly more efficient for community boards and City agencies. The City receives over 3,500 prioritized budget requests each year – each of which receives a public response from the responsible agency in that same budget year.
Additionally, every fall, OMB facilitates dozens of borough budget consultations, where Community Board members engage directly with various City capital and operational agencies. Community Boards define agendas for these meetings, which are intended to help them better understand agency strategies and funding considerations. This understanding informs the Community Boards’ formulation and ranking of budget requests to agencies in the coming budget cycle. District Consultations and Borough service cabinet meetings are other forums where How capital agencies collaborate with community boards agencies work with community board members to relay progress and iterate plans to better deliver on community needs.
Agencies draw on these formal submissions and related consultations to help identify neighborhood-specific and citywide issues and inform capital investments. This work is coupled with ongoing engagement with community boards, such as trainings, information sharing, and charettes.
DOT Street Ambassador Program - How DOT facilitates direct conversations on street safety improvements
Since 2015, DOT has used its Street Ambassador Program to expand public engagement around its Street Improvement Projects. The Ambassadors engage the community at events, parks, and busy streets, using smartphones to collect information regarding street and safety improvements in many languages. These conversations reach groups that are traditionally underrepresented at public meetings. DOT uses this information to help prioritize specific street and safety improvements.
DOT Street Ambassador Program - How DOT facilitates direct conversations on street safety improvements
DDC has expanded its community and government relations functions to implement a robust borough-based communications strategy. The agency engages communities as partners in decision-making related to execution of construction and its day-to-day impacts on the community, such as water shutdowns or the coordination of work hours to avoid creating vibrations near facilities that do surgeries. The agency keeps the neighborhood apprised of construction progress, coordinates street closures and utility shutoffs, and can arrange special requests such as deliveries to local homes and businesses. Borough-specific assistant directors are responsible for early and continuous outreach to key project stakeholders to address project issues.
DDC is currently conducting a pilot program that allows the agency to improve how it manages the work of community construction liaisons (CCLs). CCLs are community members or stakeholders with relationships in the community who can help develop enhanced outreach and new communications tools. Additional efforts to engage communities in project planning and delivery include a new process to provide communities with earlier notification of scheduled projects, the appointment of business corridor liaisons to work with the small business community, and enhanced community engagement on new and complex programs, such as East Side Coastal Resiliency.
Fashion, Apparel & Textile Law
Fashion law is a little bit like the Wild West. There’s a lot of potential, but the rules can be convoluted and vague at best. Protecting a brand or even a single design involves intellectual property, copyrights, trademarks, and patents. A successful case requires creativity and flexibility. Harris Ingram represents boutique design houses like Marta and Thorne, individual designers like Mara Bond, and illustrators and graphic designers. We protect their products against copycats large and small, and guide them through manufacturing ethics and labeling laws.
Intellectual Property
Ideas, tangible or not, are the most important things to protect in today’s competitive creative market. With so many channels and constantly replenishing feeds to watch out for, tracing the ownership and originality of a design, brand name, or invention needs the laser-focused eye of a trained attorney. We’ll handle the search, application, and filing process of trademarks, copyrights, and patents. And if your idea has been infringed upon, our litigation team will negotiate the best possible licensing and settlement agreements.
Art Litigation
Demystifying art law is in itself a creative practice. It requires finesse, strategic structuring, and, in many ways, empathy. At the end of the day, art and its worth is profoundly personal. In such matters, mediation or arbitration almost always yields the most fulfilling results. However, should the occasion arise, our lawyers are more than prepared to move into litigation. From artists, agents, dealers, galleries, museums, and auction houses, our clients have always walked away from their disputes or deals knowing that their core interests were preserved.
Digital Media & Technology
The internet, software, and technology are so pervasive that we can’t remember having ever lived without them. They make our lives simpler, but behind the curtain are fluctuating challenges in protection and monetization; challenges that our firm stays two steps ahead of. We’ve helped engineers, inventors, gaming startups, and entrepreneurs develop, license, sell, and maintain ownership over their creations. We’ve also negotiated purchasing and partnership agreements for larger investment companies looking for their unicorn.
Liability & Risk
Whether you run a theater, recording studio, or an eCommerce website, all businesses need to minimize their legal liability and risk. Our lawyers will assess the structure of your operation, such as its physical or digital space, the types of products you sell, who your consumers are, what type of company you have filed under (LLC, Inc, etc.), and so on. From there, we will tailor the right risk plan, complete with permit applications, insurance policies, and more, so you can worry less about liabilities and concentrate on growing your business.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.