Testify to COGE, call for a City agency for maritime

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UPDATE! MORE TIME TO TESTIFY! AT LEAST UNTIL NIGHT OF 7/23! For a while, the last COGE hearing was listed as 7/13, so we thought 7/13 was the deadline, and we didn’t get an answer when we asked on email. On the afternoon of 7/14, they added a hearing on 7/23 calling it “Final Meeting of the Commission of Government Efficiency. We don’t know when they will stop taking written testimony.” That means you have at least until then to submit testimony.

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).

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

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.

PortSide’s written testimony to COGE is here.

At bottom, see the video with our ED Carolina Salguero testifying in person on 6/30/26, and the second video with her answering questions from the COGE commissioners. If you want to see it on the full, officail recording, go 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.

PortSide testimony on 6/30/26 to COGE.

PortSide ED Carolina Salguero responding to comments from the COGE commissioners.