Maloney asks why vision plan is delayed and how it affects budget
Maloney notes the vision plan is delayed to summer 2027; EDC cites new administration coordination; funding models are undetermined and EDC is open-minded on the next RFP.
I want to acknowledge that my colleague, Councilmember Sanchez, has joined us.
On waterfront careers, I wanted to go back to that question from earlier.
This committee and the council is supportive of the Waterfront Careers Initiative to support CUNY's Maritime Tech Degree Program.
So that is some investment that we are making on that front.
I wanted to push on the vision plan.
The vision plan is delayed, expected to wrap up in summer 2027.
That's a full year delayed than the original timeline.
Can you speak to why?
As we are getting settled in as administration, we are doing ongoing coordination.
to not only bring folks up to speed, but to make sure that we have a thoughtful approach to the full study.
And will that timeline push up against, say, obviously this is an expensive endeavor.
We talked about some of that.
How would that relate to the budget conversations and budget negotiations that we would need to be having?
Yeah, I think that as part of the vision study,
As I had mentioned, there's kind of a lot of different ways we can think about what kind of funding we're even talking about.
Are we looking for funding at a private operator?
Are we looking at funding through NYC Ferry?
Are we looking for small recreational services?
So I think it's a little early to predetermine what kind of funding we're looking for, we would be looking for, or what would be asked for.
And as you're thinking about the next step in procurement a few years out, is there a world where you'd consider dividing up the system by routes or relying on private operators?
Are you open-minded on how you'll approach the next RFP?
It is right now because we still have two years left.
We haven't made any decisions about the whether to RFP or extend the current operating agreement.
At whatever time we do put out an RFP, so whether that's, you know, at the end of this term or at the end of
one or two of the future terms, we would, of course, take a hard look at the full system to understand how we've been managing it and whether that's the right way to do it.
So we made a lot of major changes to the operating agreement.
between the first and the second version, I think we now have a much better handle on how to operate it.