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Dear New Yorkers,
Twice a year, the City publishes the "Mayor's Management Report” (MMR), a report card on how the City is measuring up. Mandated by New York City’s charter, the MMR serves as a public account of the performance of City agencies, tracking whether they are delivering services efficiently, effectively, and expeditiously.
Well, the latest MMR is here and my office dug into the data. We looked at some key indicators of the City's performance on the basics: Education, Homelessness, Transportation, Sanitation, and our Social Safety Net.
Though there were several positive data points, like how New York City made history by diverting more than 100 million tons of organics from the landfill, there were overall many concerning statistics my team found during our review of the “Mayor’s Management Report.”
Here are some top-line findings:
Education: Class sizes are up and fewer new school seats were created compared to last year, just as the mandate to reduce class sizes approaches. Meanwhile, NYC schools lost 2,062 teachers last year.
Sanitation: Rat inspections by the Department of Health are back up at pre-pandemic levels. But NYCHA's response time to rat complaints in public housing is lagging—with just 53% of complaints responded to within 5 days.
Homelessness: While the number of people exiting shelter is going up, it hasn’t kept pace with the rapid increase of people entering shelter. The NYCDHS shelter population rose nearly 3x faster than exits from shelter.
Providing a Social Safety Net: Finally, and perhaps most alarmingly, the MMR shows that just 39.7% of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, more commonly known as “food stamps,” were processed on time. This is despite the fact that the number of New Yorkers receiving SNAP benefits grew 15% in the last 5 years. Just 5 years ago, the timeliness rate was 92.7%.
One challenge in recent years has been a staffing shortage at City agencies. As my office reported earlier this year, the fact that critical positions remain unfilled or have been eliminated is having an impact on the delivery of city services. In the MMR released last week, several agencies cited staffing shortages to explain low performance—including Human Resource Administration which cited staffing shortages when noting a rise in the payment error rate for SNAP benefits.
Overall, the data shows how urgently competent, compassionate government is needed to ensure that all New Yorkers are being served equitably.
Are there City agencies that you think could be doing better? Are there issues you're concerned about? Make your voice heard by suggesting an audit—yes, you!—and my office will review your recommendation.
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