Borough president

Each borough elects a president whose land-use role is formal but advisory: ULURP applications pass through the borough president for a recommendation after the community board and before the City Planning Commission votes. Borough presidents also appoint community board members and hold a seat's worth of influence in appointments to the Commission itself.

In practice the office functions as a borough-scale counterweight to block-scale politics — positioned to weigh a project's neighborhood impacts against borough-wide needs like housing supply or transit. A borough president's recommendation, though non-binding, becomes part of the application's permanent record and often frames the conditions later negotiated at the Council.