ACT BY END OF 7/13: testify to COGE, call for a City agency for maritime

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NYC needs a pro-growth maritime policy “a waterfront that works for all.”  A way to get that is create a new City agency for maritime. An agency can be created by changing the City charter. Mayor Zohran Mamdani created a short-running charter revision commission called the Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE). Their deadline for testimony is end of day Monday, 7/13. We provide three options to help you testify.

  • Option 1 is a short template calling for a pro-maritime policy and new City agency for maritime without justifying why this is needed.

  • Option 2 is longer and explains what NYC maritime is to justify this change. Use instead of Option 1, if you prefer.

  • Option 3 is a list of problems with the current maritime management system that you can append to your testimony (using Option 1 or 2) or just read as a reference to understand why change is needed.

Here's the COGE website, and the direct link to their "submit written comment" form is here

PortSide will submit written testimony with more details about our saga with the EDC that obliged us to launch the campaign #PortSideNeedsaHome. Our ED Carolina Salguero testified in person to COGE on June 30. See that in the official COGE recording here.

  • PortSide testimony starts at 1:34:19. 

  • Q+A with PortSide starts at 1:39:40 and concludes at 1:44:08. 

Why do we need a City agency for maritime?

If you are not a maritime person directly experiencing how hard it is to do maritime things in NYC, please see our webpage Advocacy for a description of what NYC is missing in terms of maritime and the dysfunction and impediments to maritime activity. Or read documents Option 2 and 3 above.

The fix is putting maritime people in charge of planning, designing, and managing NYC’s maritime assets and ensuring that they influence waterfront design around the City. If that solution seems obvious to you, know that is not how NYC has been doing it for decades since the City shut down, in 1991, a maritime agency it had for over 100 years under changing names.