A WSR Interview With the UWS Elected Official Running for Manhattan Borough President

By Gus Saltonstall

Upper West Siders will know State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal as one of the neighborhood’s elected officials, but he is also running to be the next Manhattan Borough President.

The primary elections will take place on June 24 this year, with early voting starting on June 14, and the race for Manhattan Borough President will be on the ballots of Upper West Siders.

Among the candidates in that race is Hoylman-Sigal, along with Upper East Side City Councilmember Keith Powers, and Calvin Sun, a first-time candidate who works as a doctor. You can read more about the responsibilities of the Manhattan Borough President position — HERE.

The Rag interviewed Hoylman-Sigal this week at his campaign office on the Upper West Side about the race, including questions related to his positions on a variety of topics, such as housing, public safety, vacant storefronts, bike lanes, and more.

Answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

INTERVIEW

WSR: Why was this the right time and office to set your sights on?

Hoylman-Sigal: I’ve always admired the work of former Manhattan Borough Presidents Gale Brewer, C. Virginia Fields, and Ruth Messinger and I’m thrilled to have earned their support. And the current borough president, Mark Levine, has done a stellar job, as well.

For me, it was where can I make a difference? I’ve served in Albany for 12 years, passed over 370 bills, but I think our local governments are really our bulwark of protecting our most vulnerable from the Trump administration. If New York isn’t going to stand up for undocumented immigrants, transgender kids, abortion rights, who is? New York City is the laboratory of so many of those efforts. So, to have a role in local government, is really important, and I want to make a difference at the city level. I ran four years ago. I didn’t do this on a lark by any means. I came in second by a couple points behind Mark Levine, so I feel like I have studied the office, as well as being part of a community board for a decade and serving three terms as its chair.

A really profound quote that I think about is that New York isn’t a top-down city, it’s a bottom up, and it’s so true in my experience as a local community activist. The borough president is really the central hub for progress and has this unique ability to bring parties together, other elected officials, community board members, stakeholders, and hammer out a path forward. That’s what I find most exciting about the job.

Hoylman-Sigal missed out on securing the Manhattan Borough President Democratic nomination in 2021 by just two percentage points to Mark Levine. Before choosing to run for the position this second time, Hoylman-Sigal was elected to the State Senate in the 27th District in 2012, and then again after redistricting in 2023 for the 47th District.

His current district runs from around West 14th to West 100th streets on the west side of Manhattan.

WSR: You’d be going from a state senator to the borough president. There are a lot of neighborhoods between Wall Street and Inwood, how would you look to be a voice for all these different communities?

Hoylman-Sigal: That’s where local partnerships are really important. I’m not going to pretend to know every nook and cranny of neighborhoods that I don’t serve right now, but that’s where you partner up with the community boards, local elected officials, and block associations. I got my start in a block association and I remember very clearly the woman, Vicky F. Polman, who recruited me 28 years ago to join the West 10th Block Association, and I did it, and from there I got involved in my local political club, my local community board, ran for office once unsuccessfully, than served for a decade and ran again when the seat opened up for state senate on the west side. So it’s those partnerships that bring to bare the nuanced perspective of the local neighborhoods that cannot be washed over. Back to the bottom-up theory, you need to work closely as the borough president with your colleagues at every level of government. That’s why I feel gratified to have this support from this wide group of elected officials. They are going to be my partners, with their supporters, and it’s going to be a big table and everybody will have a seat.

Hoylman-Sigal has been endorsed by City Councilmember Gale Brewer, Reps. Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman, State Senators Cordell Cleare and Robert Jackson, Assemblymembers Linda Rosenthal, Micah Lasher, and Grace Lee, and other electeds, unions, and political groups. You can check out the full list of endorsements — HERE.

WSR: On the Upper West Side, there is this ongoing conversation about the balance of creating new development, while preserving the historic elements of the neighborhood. How do you see that balance, and how would you look to specifically create new housing?

Hoylman-Sigal: Balance is very important and preservation is crucial. You don’t know a neighborhood by what was built in the last five years, you understand a neighborhood based on its historic place in the borough and the city. Affordability is key in the equation. You have to negotiate where you can to save history.

One of the earliest fights I was ever engaged in on the community level was an effort to save the Edgar Allan Poe House at NYU from demolition by the university. I was standing there with Jerry Nadler and preservationists in Washington Square Park in opposition to a university wanting to tear down the home of one of the greatest literary figures in American history. Elected officials and the borough president need to step in and call to question where our values are when it comes to the history of our neighborhoods.

With that said, you can’t be an obstructionist. We know the average rent in Manhattan is around $5,000 a month, and it’s only pointing upward. I look at this issue through my daughters’ eyes. I have a 14-year-old and a 7-year-old. Are they going to be able to live in this city? What is their future in New York? Many of the issues that I work on in Albany and in the city are from that perspective as a parent. I think it’s something that separates me from my colleagues running, and I think it is an important difference.

Back to how you build more affordable housing, I used to work for the Partnership for New York City, which had a long history of building affordable units. The current borough president has identified around 70,000 parcels that could be developed. I want to expand on that, but we need to bring the nonprofit development model into affordable housing construction. Nonprofit developers partnering with for-profit developers and other groups to create a community-type development, where profit isn’t the be all and end all of a new housing development. By utilizing nonprofits, there are tax benefits, but there are also important services that they bring along to developments. The other thing is to use city and state bonding authority to provide bridge loans and other support to developers. Gov. Kathy Hochul introduced a bill to provide a billion dollar bond for the new Buffalo Bills stadium. If we can bond stadiums, we have a moral imperative to bond for the creation of affordable housing. It’s about priorities and setting them, and affordable housing is a priority.

My big ideas involve also creating a Manhattan Tenants Union. We passed new laws last session to protect tenants in non-rent regulated apartments from eviction and from unfair rent increases. A lot of tenants don’t know about it, so I want to organize those tenants, many of them on the Upper West Side, to ensure that they know their rights and that they are protected moving forward.

WSR: For the vacant storefront issue, how would you look to better support small businesses in the borough, and also find a way to fill stores that sit empty for years?

Hoylman-Sigal: For starters, I would champion the end of the commercial rent tax that affects businesses under 96th Street. It’s wildly unfair that small businesses are paying an extra tax in Manhattan. This tax has been eliminated for every other borough besides Manhattan. It’s time to get rid of it here. I also strongly support our local chamber of commerce. Talk about unfair, local chambers of commerce in every borough have been supported in the state budget except for Manhattan, and finally this year we got an allocation for the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. They are the way station for so many businesses in the climate.

One of the things I want to initiate in my borough president’s office is a small business navigator, in order to supplement what the city does already for specifically Manhattan. Look, I’ve gotten inquires about outdoor dining sheds from small businesses that are trying to work through the confusing and often complicated rules around them, so wouldn’t it be good to have someone in the BP’s office to make that their mission, to support small businesses? Finally, the ongoing saga around scaffolding is real. Not enough has been done about it in the City Council for decades, and I just passed a bill through committee in Albany that will allow individuals to sue as a private right of action on longstanding sidewalk sheds, but we need to zero in on the issue, and I would do that with my small business navigator because we’ve seen the impact of scaffolding on businesses is considerable.

WSR: What are the ways that you would make Manhattanites feel safer? Is it putting more police everywhere? Or more of a focus on finding ways to help New Yorkers experiencing mental health crises on the streets?

Hoylman-Sigal: The city’s rollout of B-HEARD [Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division] has not been terribly effective; it needs more resources and an audit from the city comptroller’s office. It’s an important start, but having mental health services on the platforms. combined with more cops, when there is a surge of crime or sense of insecurity, is important.

I support cameras on subway cars, I support more cops, but we don’t want to take them out of the local precincts. That’s part of the problem as moving them underground doesn’t do much for our quality of life above ground. We need to recruit more officers, pay them more, and give them the respect they deserve. I’m proud to have voted for the new involuntary commitment laws that bring us in line with virtually every other state in the country, where if an individual clearly can’t provide for themselves, they can be directed into treatment. More cops, but don’t take them out of our precincts, expand the definition of involuntary commitment, fix B-HEARD, along with more cameras in general, are all positive steps. I continue to be concerned about fare evasion. I’m all for free buses when they are paid for, and sometimes I feel like I’m the only person paying for a bus in Manhattan. We need better technology, both for turnstile jumpers, and in some instances where people get confused on whether they have to pay for the bus. We are losing over $700 million a year due to fare evasion and it really undermines our collective sense of civic responsibility.

Finally I’ll say this on subway safety, it’s the touchstone of so many intersecting issues in all of these New York City elections. More capital dollars toward the physical infrastructure of our subway stations is key. We have less than half of our subway stations accessible with elevators, hopefully congestion pricing will begin to tick those boxes. By making some changes, including better lighting and leaning barriers rather than benches, can make a world of difference in making people feel safer.

I put my daughter on the subway every morning and she goes to school. Sometimes she calls with a report of what she saw and I take it very seriously. My two daughters are my eyes and ears for a lot of these issues.

WSR: Within the public safety conversation is the topic of electric bikes, would you look to push for more enforcement around the vehicles? Also, would you look to expand bike lanes in the borough?

Hoylman-Sigal: It’s an issue I’ve worked on for a number of years. When it comes to dangerous delivery bikes, I passed the bill in Albany that requires gasoline-powered mopeds to be licensed at the point of sale, meaning you can’t buy a moped, take it out of the shop, and jump onto the street. You’ve got to get it licensed with the Department of Motor Vehicles. I’ve heard from precincts that it’s made a difference already, just a year into it being in effect. The license plates are key when it comes to enforcement. That’s why I’m pushing this session that all commercial e-bikes also get licensed, and I’ll keep working on it if we don’t get it done.

Two other things we need to do, in addition to registering commercial e-bikes, we need to have delivery drivers insured. The onus needs to be on the app delivery company, not the driver, many of whom are struggling to support their families. It’s important, though, that God forbid a Manhattanite gets hit by a delivery driver that they’re covered by insurance. Right now, nine times out of 10, it’s not the case. Third, we need to ban the delivery app from imposing these unfair algorithms on the drivers. They’re working under pressure that is unfair and could be life changing for them; if they get thrown off the app, they lose their job and their ability to bring home a paycheck to their family. I’m very sympathetic to the conditions they work under. I think it’s worth having your noodles arrive lukewarm at the risk of them driving unsafely and causing havoc on the streets.

WSR: What do you see as the role of government in both supporting the larger Manhattan parks, but also the green spaces that don’t have a conservancy to fall back on?

Hoylman-Sigal: We need dedicated revenue streams. Every year, parks are subject to the whims of the city budgeting process. I support committed, dedicated revenue stream, perhaps out of ticket sales for professional sporting events as a way to create a circle between open space and sporting activities. It is the public infrastructure that the next city administration, along with the borough president, needs to be focused on. By public infrastructure, I’m talking about housing, schools, open space and parks, mass transit, and arts and culture. That’s what makes Manhattan magical, and a place where people want to move.

Small parks and green spaces are part of this formula. And I do support the call for 1 percent of the city budget going to our parks, but it needs to be baked into statutes or regulations, because oftentimes parks and arts and culture are the first items on the chopping block.

WSR: Some progress has been made with schools continuing to find their way back from the learning interruptions during COVID, but how would you continue to support schools in Manhattan, especially for the younger childcare years?

Hoylman-Sigal: I support the plans brought forth by a number of candidates to have afterschool and universal childcare, both at the 2-K and 3-K levels. I’ve benefitted from that. I’m a working husband, as is my husband, and we couldn’t have done it early on raising our kids if we didn’t have that kind of support. I can’t imagine how somebody who is working two or three jobs and has kids to care for, without a grandparent or another family member, how they can afford childcare. It is a really key component of the affordability crisis. Afterschool, early childcare, combined with maternal health before a child is born. I’ve been a staunch advocate of something called the Nurse Family Partnership, where nurses actually visit young families before their child is born and help educate them in the early weeks and months of birth.

On public schools the Borough President plays a big role. I’ve helped lead the way on dyslexia. 20 percent of our kids by estimates are dyslexic. Again, this issue of me being a parent, seeing issues through the eyes of my kid. We discovered my 14-year-old was dyslexic when she was in fourth grade, which is about four grades too late. One of the things I’m keen on is creating a parent resource advocacy center in the borough president’s office, where parents can get their kids pre-screened for dyslexia.

WSR: I was also hoping you would share some of your favorite spots on the Upper West Side?

Hoylman-Sigal: For me, I love City Diner. We also have so many arts and cultural institutions in the neighborhood. I was at the American Museum of Natural History after campaigning with my seven-year-old at the Green Market. I’ve been very proud to help provide resources to that museum, along with the new LGBTQ museum, which will be transformative for LGBTQ people in our city to actually have a space to see their history come to life. Not for nothing, I’d be the first open LGBTQ borough-wide elected official, so I am mindful of that.

I’m a big fan of Popup Bagels too. I know they are new on the block, but I like the consistency of the bagels, they’re a little smaller and you can have two at a time without getting too full.

WSR: Would you end with your 30-second pitch to a voter asking why they should vote for you?

Hoylman-Sigal: I would say you should vote for me because I’m a public-school parent who has served 12 years in office, having passed important legislation on quality of life, getting illegal guns off of our streets, And improving our public schools. I have the endorsements of leaders you trust, like Gale Brewer, Jerry Nadler, and Dan Goldman.

You can read more about Hoylman-Sigal’s platform on his website.

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