The New York City Council will take its first step toward enabling one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s major campaign proposals at its stated meeting Thursday. Council Member Lincoln Restler will reintroduce legislation to create a Department of Community Safety – a new, non-police agency that Mamdani wants to build to take over police response to mental health calls in nonviolent situations, among other responsibilities.
The bill text will be the same as a version that was introduced at the end of 2025, Restler told City & State. (Restler had to reintroduce it because of the start of a new City Council session.) It will have a couple fewer sponsors to start, however, as four of the 27 previous co-sponsors have now left the body. Restler said he has not talked to new members about the legislation yet.
The mayor’s office is exploring all options to create the new department. It’s not clear that they’re committed to Restler’s legislation as the only means to create the department, though Mamdani has expressed support for it. The Mamdani administration has already begun hiring people under First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan whose work would include rolling out this department, though it’s unclear how many people or in what specific roles.
It’ll be a busy day Thursday. The council will also vote to override 17 of former Mayor Eric Adams’ vetoes, reviving a broad spectrum of measures ranging from lifting the cap on street vending licenses and extending the lookback window for legal claims made under the city’s gender-motivated violence protection law.
Thursday’s meeting will be the first time City Council Speaker Julie Menin leads her colleagues in a veto override. It’ll also open a new chapter in the dynamic between the mayor’s office and the City Council. After Thursday’s meeting, any clashes between the two sides of City Hall will have two new generals at the helm: Menin and Mamdani. The council plans to override all of Adams’ lingering vetoes save for three of them.
Members won’t vote to revive the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA, which would have given certain nonprofits and local housing preservation groups the first chance to purchase distressed apartment buildings. The measure’s sponsor, Council Member Sandy Nurse, said that efforts to gather enough support for an override were unsuccessful, but she plans to reintroduce the bill this year. “While I am disappointed we are not defending the Council and will not override the veto, COPA has been the Progressive Caucus’s top priority for four years and we are not backing down,” she said in a statement. “The bottom line is this: if we do not have stronger protections to keep working class New Yorkers here, they will continue to leave.”
The council is also expected to let Adams’ vetoes stand on a measure that would have granted the Civilian Complaint Review Board direct access to police body camera footage and a bill that would have required newly built affordable housing to have a minimum amount of two- or three-bedroom units.
