Former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Photograph Credit score: Andrew Cuomo Marketing campaign
New York is at a crossroads. We will both double-down on a damaged plan that’s years late, billions over finances, and already out of date, or we are able to repair the issue with competence and customary sense.
Right here’s the reality: Rikers Island because it exists as we speak is a human-rights failure—outdated, unsafe, unacceptable. It have to be closed as we all know it. However the Metropolis’s “borough-based jails” scheme is the fallacious treatment. It’s quick turning into New York’s subsequent Huge Dig: a $16 billion boondoggle that might drop large towers in the course of residential neighborhoods, hurt small companies and colleges, divide communities, and nonetheless fail to ship a safer, fairer system.
We’d like a plan that works for security, and for taxpayers. My proposal does precisely that: rebuild fashionable, humane services on Rikers Island in phases whereas changing the 4 borough jail websites into reasonably priced housing and mixed-use growth that can enhance our neighborhoods.
Why that is vital
Begin with the details. The Metropolis’s 2019 plan underneath Invoice de Blasio projected $8 billion in prices and shutting Rikers by 2027. Right this moment, the value tag has ballooned to $15–16 billion and the Metropolis’s personal Funds Director has admitted the 2027 mandate received’t be met. Main contracts for Queens ($3.9B) and the Bronx ($2.9B) alone already exceed $7 billion. Brooklyn is 2 years delayed. Manhattan isn’t projected to complete till 2032—5 years after the authorized deadline to shutter Rikers. And the unique plan’s whole capability—3,300 beds—is lower than half of Rikers’ inhabitants as not too long ago as March 2025 (over 7,000).
My opponent, Zohran Mamdani, needs to proceed down the trail of the failed de Blasio plan that’s years late, billions over finances, and disdained by native communities that might be saddled with housing the borough-based jails. That’s ideology over competence. It’s authorities promising what it will probably’t ship and sending taxpayers the invoice.
The higher manner
Phased rebuild on Rikers. Exchange decrepit buildings with state-of-the-art, light-filled housing designed for rehabilitation, security, and mental-health therapy—one constructing at a time—so operations proceed with out disruption. This is similar technique we used at LaGuardia Airport: construct new, maintain working, open on time. We did it. It labored.
Accountability and effectivity. Focus building on one secured website to keep away from redundant prices and years of neighborhood litigation and logistics nightmares. Use design-build and disciplined challenge administration—the instruments we used for LaGuardia, Moynihan Practice Corridor, the Kosciuszko Bridge, and the L-Practice repair—to ship on time and on finances. Even earlier than the Metropolis’s prices exploded, a Manhattan Institute evaluation instructed a Rikers-rebuild method may save lots of of thousands and thousands versus the unique borough-jail estimates. Right this moment, the financial savings vs. the swollen $15–16 billion plan could be measured in billions.
Redevelop the borough websites for housing and group use. New York wants properties. The cleared jail parcels are large, transit-accessible, and prepared. Working with native leaders, we are able to ship reasonably priced housing, childcare, retail, open house, and job-creating mixed-use tasks tailor-made to every borough’s wants. As an alternative of erecting 4 fortress-jails in residential blocks, let’s construct neighborhood property that households welcome.
Assure visitation entry. The one supposed benefit of borough-based jails (nearer visitation) will be achieved with direct categorical buses from every borough to Rikers for households and attorneys.
Humane and protected on the similar time
This isn’t a selection between humanity and public security. A contemporary Rikers campus can do each: protected, safe services with expanded mental-health providers, habit therapy, training, and work packages, in addition to the staffing, design, and know-how to guard individuals in custody and the officers who serve them. Finish the established order and construct a system that really rehabilitates and reduces recidivism, slightly than repeating the errors of the previous.
Competence issues
We’ve finished the “impossible” earlier than. When the MTA introduced an L-Practice shutdown that might cripple town for 15 to twenty months, I questioned the premise, introduced in consultants, modified the plan—and stored the trains working. When naysayers stated LaGuardia couldn’t be rebuilt with out shutting it down, we proved them fallacious. The lesson is straightforward: once you get the administration proper, New York wins.
A metropolis that works for everybody
New Yorkers don’t need slogans. They need outcomes. They need a justice system that’s humane and a metropolis that’s reasonably priced. My plan delivers each: shut Rikers as we all know it by rebuilding it the correct manner, and switch 4 controversial jail websites into tens of hundreds of properties and actual neighborhood renewal. That’s the way you enhance lives now – not 5 or ten years from now after billions have been wasted and deadlines blown by.
New Yorkers rise repeatedly as a result of we match creativeness with competence. Let’s cease the Huge dig and begin constructing the long run. Rebuild Rikers the correct manner. Construct housing our households can afford. And let’s show, as soon as extra, that when New York leads with frequent sense and braveness, we set the usual for the world’s biggest metropolis.
