Portraits of City Hall

By: Andrea Pineda-Salgado and Jason Evan Ponterotto
Photographs: Genevieve Charles and Urvi Shrivastav

In late February, City Newsroom reporters spent the day exploring the inner workings of City Hall. By talking to local news reporters in Room 9, participating in a press conference, attending a City Council meeting and getting exclusive one-on-one interviews with elected officials, City Newsrooms reporters left knowing the inside scoop on how the local government runs.

The following are portraits of prominent figures at City Hall, who spoke with us sharing their favorite part of their jobs and what they think is the biggest challenge New York City is facing right now.

The following interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Name: Anne Williams-Isom

Age: 59
Title: Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services
Best part of her job: “It’s been really nice to work with people who have similar life experience, come from similar backgrounds and are here at a really difficult time to put our minds, and I say, our hearts and our smarts together.”
Biggest challenge NYC faces: “It’s been really difficult to manage, to get the amount of staff, the amount of resources that we need in order to really make sure we’re taking care of the migrants.”

Name: Fabien Levy

Age: 40
Title: Deputy Mayor for Communications
Best part of his job: “That I get to work on every issue facing the city. Everything we communicate from a city perspective comes through my office.”
Biggest challenge he faces: “I think the migrant crisis is 100% the biggest issue.”

Name: Adrienne Adams

Age: 63
Title: City Council Speaker
Best part of her job: “The best part of my job is knowing that I have brought something wonderful to somebody else’s life that would not have necessarily happened had I not been in this position and been able to do the phenomenal things that I’ve been able to do.”
Biggest challenge NYC faces: “Housing, I believe, is at the forefront of concern because it is something that we should not have been this far behind building places for people to live.”

Name: Meera Joshi

Age: 55
Title: Deputy Mayor for Operations
Best part of her job: “It is a massively complex and interesting city. And every day I learn something new about how the city works. And most of it is pretty magical.”
Biggest challenge NYC faces: “Quality of life. It’s really important for us to rebuild and evolve our infrastructure.”

Name: Jeff Coltin

Age: 30
Title: Reporter, Politico
Best part of his job: “People have been covering city politics in this room for more than 100 years. And, we’re just a part of this tradition. And, we get to have fun.”
Biggest challenge NYC faces: “Probably the biggest issue is the migrants coming to New York City and the effort to house them and serve them and bring them into regular New York City life.”

Name: Ben Fractenberg

Age: 44
Title: Reporter, The CITY
Best part of his job: “It’s my ability to travel all around the city covering different types of events. I do feature pieces. I can cover breaking news, hard news.”
Biggest challenge NYC faces: “I would say that the biggest issue is housing. Up in Albany, the governor and other officials have struggled to come up with legislation or a plan really to address the lack of affordable housing not only in the city but throughout the state.”

Name: Emily Ngo

- Age: 40
- Title: Reporter, Politico, Co-Author of New York Playbook
- Best part of his job: “Learning something new every single day, talking with people all day long and getting to share what I learned with the general public.”
- Biggest challenge NYC faces: “I would say a broader challenge in general is people not talking with each other and operating in silos. It’s something I talk about often called confirmation bias.”

Name: Carmen de la Rosa

- - Age: 38
  - Title: Council Member for District 10
  - Best Part of Their Job: “I grew up in Washington Heights and Inwood so I know the generational issues that have existed in our community. To be able to be part of a body that not only works to solve those issues, feels like I am paying a debt back to the community that gave me so much.”
  - Biggest Challenge: “The biggest part of our job are the budget negotiation fights — making sure that we are funding the critical needs that New Yorkers need right now. When I talk to my constituents, they’re desperate for help.”

Name: Shekar Krishnan

- - - Age: 38
    - Title: Council Member for District 25
    - Best Part of Their Job: “There are 175,000 constituents in my neighborhood. I love the fact that we can push our city to make sure the programs, resources and services that are up here are delivered to my community.”
    - Biggest Challenge: “I believe you cannot cut your way to prosperity, that we all rise together. As a city, we need to be investing in services that lift up all New Yorkers — we are not doing that right now, but we in the city council are fighting to change that.”

Name: Joe Borelli

- - - Age: 41
    - Title: Council Member for District 51 | Minority Leader
    - Best Part of Their Job: “The answer I’d give to a kindergarten class is because I can create change in my community — which is a positive thing and I’ve done that, it’s rewarding. The thing I tell my friends is I love my job. Every day I get to play in a contact sport. Politics is more Veep than House of Cards, but every once in a while it’s like House of Cards and it’s a lot of fun.”
    - Biggest Challenge: “I think the biggest challenge is going to be long term financing of different things — the budgets outpacing the growth of the city. Pace is an important thing — keeping up with inflation etc. because we’re going to be paying our workers more, we’re going to be paying for services more. It’s harder to keep that tax base constant.”

Name: Katie Honan

- - - Age: 38
    - Title: Senior Reporter, The CITY
    - Best Part of Their Job: “Every day is really fun and exciting. Even if we’re doing really serious things, I have always been really nosy and this is the type of job where I get to be nosy professionally. I ask people lots of questions, see something on the street that seems weird to me or interesting and then trace it down to find out the full story behind it.”
    - Biggest Challenge: “New York City is a big city, but mostly for most New Yorkers, it’s financial instability that comes out in the lack of affordable housing. There’s really a big disparity between the rich and the poor, and it continues to grow. People have a real serious issue in finding places to live, which is one of the basics of basic standards of living, so the city just continues to get more and more expensive. It’s really difficult for people to just live here.”

Newsroom Class

Andrea Pineda-Salgado

+ posts

Andrea is a bilingual reporter covering immigration in New York City. She is a lifelong New Yorker whose work has centered on stories that affect the city’s immigrant communities.

Jason Evan Ponterotto

+ posts

Jason is a reporter from Riverdale, New York and covers public health for City Newsroom. He has reported on a various issues including politics, racial justice and currently public health. Jason is a graduate of Howard University where he wrote for the The Hilltop Newspaper. Jason has also interned for New York Amsterdam News.