City Planning official outlines district needs and budget-request process to Bronx Community Board 11

Bronx Community Board 11 heard a step-by-step briefing on how to prepare and submit community district needs statements and budget requests during its May 27, 2026, Community Development and Budget Priority Committee meeting.

Nick Stamper, senior program manager in the Department of City Planning’s capital planning and support team, told board members that the two-part process combines a planning narrative and specific budget asks and is intended to surface neighborhood priorities for city agencies and the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). “Community district needs, as we like to frame it, is the city’s oldest community budgeting process,” Stamper said. He described DCP’s role as facilitator and support for boards drafting statements and requests.

Stamper walked the committee through the submission components—an overview, the board’s top three pressing issues, seven policy-area sections for deeper detail and granular "needs groups"—and the anatomy of a budget request, which must identify whether an item is a capital investment or an expense, name the agency, explain the request and note whether it is districtwide or site‑specific. He said capital projects typically involve longer-lived investments (generally items costing more than about $50,000) while expense requests cover ongoing operations such as staffing and program funding.

Stamper also reviewed the annual schedule: DCP begins outreach in May, the submission form usually opens in June, district needs submissions are typically due around Halloween, and OMB publishes agency responses in the preliminary budget in January. He said DCP collects roughly 3,800 budget requests each year from all community boards and then hands submissions to OMB for agency review and response.

To improve transparency and make agency feedback more useful to boards, Stamper described a recent update to the agency-response workflow: agencies now answer four structured yes/no questions about whether they understand, have already done, support and can accommodate each request and are required to provide a written explanation for each answer. “We made the written explanation a required field. And so agencies are now required to type in for every response a written explanation of why the response was made,” he said.

The presentation included practical advice for boards drafting requests: be direct, include rationale linking the request to local need, provide precise location details and refresh requests based on prior-year agency responses. Stamper showed an example capital request (from Bronx Community Board 7) that listed specific items—reconstructing a bike/pedestrian path, installing park lighting and repairing rip-rap—so an agency can cost and evaluate each component.

Stamper also outlined supports DCP offers to make the process easier: data resources and assistance with research, a citywide public survey that DCP will host and parse by district for boards, promotional templates, draft-submission reviews, one-on-one budget-request walkthroughs, bespoke trainings and tech support. He unveiled a new capital-project portal that maps location-specific capital requests and agency responses across the city so boards and the public can explore where requests are concentrated.

During the public comment period, resident K. Cardona urged the board and agencies to prioritize senior housing and services for veterans, saying, "We do need decent senior housing in the communities where these seniors like myself are living" and that it is increasingly difficult for some seniors to live independently. Stamper said the process is intended to capture those needs and encouraged residents to use the survey and for staff to contact DCP for help drafting submissions.

Board members asked whether aligning a board’s requests with citywide trends increases the chance of funding. Stamper said there is overlap across boards, but the best strategy is to "represent the district’s unique perspective as authentically as possible," noting that ranking alone does not guarantee funding; many agencies must seek or reallocate funds to fulfill requests.

Stamper promised to share his slides and the survey link with the board and reiterated that DCP staff are available year‑round to review drafts before final submission. The committee closed with thanks to Stamper and reminders that the submission form opens in the summer and deadlines fall later in the year.