Gutierrez explains vote - CUNY child care workforce, CityFEPs, Progressive Caucus

I am disclosing on the record of the council proceedings that the New York City Department of Social Services and Education and my Monadnids Medical Center are funded in the budget we are adopting and my spouse, child, and sibling respectively are associated with those entities.

Permission to explain my vote?

Permission granted.

Thank you.

I want to first start off by giving all the thank yous.

I want to double down on thanking the entire finance staff, Speaker Menon, the Mamdani administration, all the staff.

This has been quite the experience, and I'm really excited that in a few hours it will be behind us.

I want to give a special shout out to the Progressive Caucus, to our champions, the Progressive Caucus leadership, Council Members Nurse, Kavan, Aviles, Santosuoso,

NPC member, Pirina Sanchez, that have been incredible partners in not just getting these critical, critical investments

to our budget, but really helping to prioritize all the needs for working class New Yorkers, for the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

I am really excited that the administration is funding the early child care workforce development at CUNY.

We had a hearing a couple months ago now, and while I am obviously in support of the expansion and the rollout of all things universal child care, I've been concerned about our ability to

match the number of seats and expansion with workforce, aka filling the classrooms with educators to do that work.

CUNY has been doing this work for a very long time.

They are up for the challenge to expand, and so I am super, super excited to see the 2.5 million investment to support this growing workforce so that anybody who's looking to

pursue a profession in early child care education can be trained and prepared to take this on.

I, of course, am very grateful that we were able to secure the funding for expanding city FEPS.

You've heard from so many of my colleagues, you've heard from Speaker Menon, just how important it has been to invest in expanding this voucher because

creating this program allows every New Yorker who is facing eviction or homelessness an opportunity and option.

And for many of us here, before we were members, we were one paycheck away from that as well.

So it's, oh, that's it?

That's my whole time?

Oh my God.

Okay.

I vote aye, except for intro 929, and I abstain from intro 553.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.