Testify to COGE, call for a City agency for maritime

COGE = Commission on Government Efficiency, a Charter Revision Commission created by Mayor Zohran Mamdani. COGE website

Update

The COGE hearings concluded Thursday, July 23 proposing five charter revisions. These revisions will appear as questions on our November ballots. Despite repeated oral and written testimony calling for the creation of a Maritime Agency, the commission did not include a ballot question on the issue, nor did they include it in their report’s “Proposals for Future Consideration” section, which can be found here. 

We have compiled a database of written testimony that mentions waterfront, maritime and EDC here. In there, the analysis of oral testimony on the same themes is courtesy of Othman Gbadamassi who created the COGE dashboard here.

Why do we need a City agency for maritime?

NYC needs a pro-growth maritime policy “a waterfront that works for all.”  A new City agency for maritime would accomplish this. An agency could have been created by changing the City charter via COGE.

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 the documents Option 2 and 3 below.

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’s written testimony to COGE is here.

We provided several options to help people testify: Option 1, Option 2, Option 3. We also offered a petition submitted with over 80 signatures.

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, official 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. 

PortSide testimony on 6/30/26 to COGE.

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