New Yorkers will soon start seeing ads promising “faster government” across the city as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s charter commission launches a $1.6 million campaign Tuesday around five proposed City Charter changes headed to voters this November.

The Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE) is set to kick off its “Vote on Faster Government” campaign on National Voter Registration Day with a new online information hub and a Looney Tunes-inspired video featuring Mamdani.

“This November, New Yorkers will be able to vote on how fast our government runs,” Mamdani says in the video, before describing the measures as simplifying construction, fast-tracking street safety projects, easing outdoor dining approvals, speeding city contracting and strengthening city savings.

Over the coming weeks, the effort will expand to paid digital advertising, public-service announcements, canvassing, briefings with community leaders and educational materials in 13 languages.

But commission officials say the campaign is not asking New Yorkers to support the measures.

“We are not recommending how they vote,” COGE Executive Director Ann Cheng told amNewYork. She said the goal is to make sure New Yorkers are well informed heading into the polls, “but not to advocate that they vote in any particular direction.”

Cheng said the commission wants to prevent voters from encountering the five questions for the first time when they reach their Nov. 3 ballots.

“We want folks to hear about them now, so they have time to research them and talk with their communities and decide how they want to vote,” she said.

Still, the campaign’s name reflects how COGE describes what the proposals would accomplish if passed. 

Asked whether “Vote on Faster Government” itself takes a position on the questions, Cheng said the phrase is meant as a factual description.

“These proposals will objectively make government move faster,” she said, pointing to changes COGE projects would shorten processes for outdoor dining applications and certain transactions involving small city-owned properties.

COGE amendments on the ballot in November

The commission unanimously approved the five proposed Charter amendments in July. They would change rules for outdoor dining and other uses of public space; overhaul city contracting procedures; create expedited processes for some street-safety projects, city property transactions and office leases; establish a centralized construction-permitting hub; and set a rainy-day fund target equal to 12% of the previous year’s city tax revenue.

COGE’s public-facing descriptions focus on the efficiencies it says the proposals would produce. But some of the amendments also change how city decisions are reviewed.

Question 1, for example, is being presented as a way to save small businesses time and money by speeding outdoor dining and accessibility approvals. It would also eliminate mandatory public hearings on sidewalk cafe applications and the City Council’s ability to call those applications up for a vote. The Department of Transportation would instead be directed to seek community input through other means.

The City Council, among others, raised concerns after the ballot measures were approved in July, warning that some proposals could reduce public input and weaken longstanding checks and balances. It stopped short of urging voters to reject them.

Cheng acknowledged the difficulty of boiling complicated Charter amendments down to something voters can quickly absorb.

“You want to be brief enough and simple enough that folks can take this information in quickly,” she said, while also ensuring the descriptions are “factually accurate.”

Palm cards will provide short descriptions and QR codes linking to COGE’s information hub, where voters can find the ballot questions, legal abstracts and proposed Charter language. Cheng said the commission tried to create the “most honest version” of condensing the measures while keeping them digestible.

The campaign will also extend beyond conventional advertising.

Cheng said officials are still determining exactly how different parts of city government will participate, but described the approach as harnessing the “full muscle of city government.”

That could include the Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement canvassing at subway stations and agencies distributing information through existing networks of contracted providers. COGE also expects to use public-service advertising space available to the city, including LinkNYC kiosks and Taxi TV.

COGE has budgeted $1.6 million for the campaign, according to City Hall. The Economic Development Corporation sought competitive bids in August for a consultant to provide public education, design and advertising aimed at maximizing awareness of the ballot questions.

Middle Seat, a political media and consulting firm whose clients have included the Biden Victory Fund, Women’s March and National Nurses United, won the bid, City Hall said. The firm previously produced paid advertising for New Yorkers for Lower Costs, an independent expenditure group supporting Mamdani in the 2025 mayoral race. Middle Seat says that work included message testing and targeted voter persuasion and ultimately involved $1.7 million in television and digital advertising.

The independent expenditure was separate from Mamdani’s campaign, and COGE says the firm’s assignment is different this time around: educating New Yorkers rather than steering their votes. The city’s RFP required all campaign materials to be “neutral” and “solely informational” about the ballot proposals.

Cheng said any outside effort explicitly urging New Yorkers to vote yes or no would be separate from COGE’s campaign.

“That wouldn’t be us,” she said, describing the commission’s role as providing voters with education.

Cheng said COGE would measure the campaign’s success partly by whether it could recreate the level of public engagement the commission saw during its summer hearings, which drew New Yorkers across the city despite the heat and rain.

“I think it would be that New Yorkers really turn out to vote,” she said.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is set to release on Tuesday a new roadmap for reducing traffic deaths and severe injuries across the five boroughs to zero over the next decade.

The 50-page plan, entitled “Vision Zero Reimagined,” commits to advancing or building upon many of the strategies the city has already embraced for making its streets safer since Vision Zero was first introduced by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014. Those include cracking down on reckless drivers, lowering speed limits, redesigning streets, and clearing intersection sightlines.

It also floats some ambitious new proposals, including the creation of areas either exclusively for or mostly oriented around pedestrians.

The plan is comprised of over 100 commitments organized into eight “big-picture goals” and involves the participation of 19 city agencies, including the city Department of Transportation (DOT) and the NYPD.

“Vision Zero Reimagined puts forward the bold measures and the practical fixes we need to make preventable tragedy no longer a part of everyday life in New York City,” Mamdani said in a statement.

“With 19  agencies and partners working together, we are doubling down on what works and paving the way for ambitious new models of street safety,” he added. “Safety is a right for every New Yorker, no matter  how you travel, where you are going or what neighborhood you call home.”

DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn said that while Vision Zero has been largely successful in reducing traffic fatalities and severe injuries, “too many families are still experiencing preventable loss, and too many of the most dangerous behaviors persist.”

“This moment demands a sharper, more focused strategy, one that builds on what works while confronting with urgency and precision the risks that remain,” he added. “Through a new 10-year Vision Zero action plan…we’re introducing a new generation of tools and policies to follow the data, double down on what we know, and present bold new strategies.”

What’s in the ‘Vision Zero Reimagined’ plan?

Specifically, the plan calls for implementing a Super Speeders program, which was authorized by the state legislature this year and would see the city install speed-limiting devices in the vehicles of repeat dangerous drivers. It would also greatly expand the use of Sammy’s Law to lower speed limits to 20 miles per hour across entire neighborhoods.

Moreover, it says the city will make at least 1,000 intersections safer annually either by using hardened daylighting — the replacement of parking spaces with hard infrastructure — or other “better treatments.” DOT had opposed a similar measure advanced by the City Council last year, which did not ultimately get a full-chamber vote, that would have required it to daylight 1,000 intersections annually with hard infrastructure.

Previously, the DOT had committed to daylighting 1,000 intersections a year with signs rather than hard infrastructure.

“We learned that hardened daylighting is just more effective,” one city official said. “So the new commitment is specifically around hardened daylighting or interventions that would be better in that circumstance.”

The plan also commits to advancing more legislation in Albany to go after reckless drivers, such as those who drive under the influence of drugs; redesigning all of the city’s nearly 200 Vision Zero “priority corridors” — roads it has identified as the most dangerous; and regulating third-party app companies that employ workers who ride electric micromobility devices.

In the 12 years since the city first launched Vision Zero, it has transformed its streetscape with the aim of making it safer for all road users.

During that time, the city lowered its default speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph, installed 3,300 speed bumps and speed cushions, and built 600 miles of bike lanes. Those changes combined with many others have led to a 16% drop in traffic fatalities between the year Vision Zero launched and last year — a decrease from an average of 287 to 241 annual deaths, according to the city.

“Vision Zero has proven that change is possible,” Flynn said. “Our efforts to redesign streets, expand automated enforcement, bring accountability to dangerous behavior, and sustained public engagement have saved hundreds of lives and driven traffic deaths to historic lows.”

However, another city official said that in this Vision Zero update, the Mamdani administration is trying to address the issues that have persisted over time. They said that is particularly the case with the plan’s focus on going after serial dangerous drivers.

“There’s proposals and commitments in this plan around having more accountability and more enforcement tools,” said the official on the condition of anonymity for this report. “One thing that kind of characterizes this plan is that it’s looking at more of those systemic areas where you know just kind of continuing to redesign streets and do some of the outreach and enforcement as we’ve been doing it. We’re feeling like we have to kind of go to the next frontier to really meaningfully keep moving the needle towards zero.”