"Most of you know that I spent more than half my life aspiring to become Brooklyn's Borough President. The borough presidents are essential to having a government of checks and balances in New York City, but we're having a tough time because our budgets have been gutted, in effect strangling the voice of our residents. I believe the borough president's job is a balance between the spirit of Brooklyn and the service of Brooklyn. The spirit of Brooklyn is about creating a great atmosphere in Brooklyn. I firmly believe that every resident has something to contribute to a better quality of life in Brooklyn, so I have created a Brooklyn volunteer service. Anyone interested in volunteering can call or e-mail my office, and we will match you with a Brooklyn organization that can use your help. My office is about to launch Respect - It's A Brooklyn Attitude, a campaign to encourage greater civility, common courtesy, and good manners in daily life. Brooklyn is a borough of block associations. These block associations have thousands of members who are on the front lines of improving our neighborhoods, one block at a time. I recently formed a Federation of Brooklyn Block and Neighborhood Associations to help address quality of life issues. This spring, the mayor and I will co-host the first annual Brooklyn Bridge to the World celebration, a two-day festival marking the 120th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge, which will include free bus tours to some of Brooklyn's great attractions. The service of Brooklyn involves my ability to deliver the goods: to provide responsive and effective constituent services and create new services that improve the lives of Brooklyn residents. I recently purchased two new graffiti cleanup trucks. Now any Brooklyn resident can call my office to have a truck remove graffiti from a residential or commercial building anywhere in our borough. Other examples of meaningful services include Camp Brooklyn, which arranged fully-paid two-week stays at summer camp for Brooklyn children last year, and the Summer Heat program, which recruited Brooklyn employers to offer summer jobs for our Brooklyn teens. Improving the health of Brooklynites is also a major focus of my office, which last year launched weight loss and anti-smoking campaigns. Lighten Up Brooklyn had a great first year - almost six thousand Brooklynites lost more than 82,000 excess pounds. Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham is working to develop a Brooklyn Health Institute, which will seek funding for research, and for the development of model programs to lessen ethnic, socioeconomic, and age-related health disparities among Brooklyn's diverse population. My job also includes addressing two of the major issues facing Brooklyn: economic development and affordable housing. One of the strategies that will benefit Brooklyn over the next few years is seizing the opportunity to redevelop sites that are underutilized under their current zoning, while using the public review process to negotiate affordable housing into market rate housing plans. I have also created a Brooklyn Housing Development Fund, allocating capital funds from my budget to reduce the cost of construction for proposed projects. At present, the fund is supporting the development of more than 500 affordable housing units in Red Hook, Bedford Stuyvesant, Ocean Hill, and Brownsville. Affordable housing for Brooklynites is my foremost priority, and I will continue to pursue agreements to include affordable housing units each time a proposal for market rate housing comes across my desk. I will also be a loud voice, as I have been my whole career, on behalf of strong rent regulation, code enforcement, and the repeal of the unfair and destructive vacancy decontrol rules. Economic development that will create more jobs is the other crucial issue we face in Brooklyn. I recently met with representatives of Carnival, one of the world's largest cruise lines, who expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for establishing a major terminal on the downtown Brooklyn waterfront, making Brooklyn a port of call for some of the world's largest cruise ships. This project would regularly bring in thousands of tourists from throughout the Northeast, generate significant business for Brooklyn retailers, suppliers, and Brooklyn's service industry, and be another major step in reclaiming our beautiful waterfront. As I've said before, I believe the commuter tax must be reinstated. And upper income New Yorkers should be taxed in proportion to their wealth. We cannot simply balance the budget by cutting the vital services that low, moderate, and middle income Brooklynites rely upon every single day. Nor can we accept tolls on our East River Bridges, which amount to an additional tax on Brooklyn residents. On the subject of education, despite the challenges of our public school system, there are many high performing public schools in Brooklyn of which we are very proud. Now we must work with the chancellor and the mayor to make that true across the board for every school in Brooklyn. I truly believe that all things are possible in Brooklyn, as long as our crime rate continues to decline. For that, I want to thank - in the strongest possible terms, Brooklyn's police officers - our men and women in blue. In May, I will bring together a broad coalition of public and community based organizations, social workers, and more than a thousand young people and their parents, to talk about the youth gangs and youth violence in our neighborhoods. We will never tolerate bias crime, or acts based on anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, or any-ism. A few weeks ago, Syed Ali prevented the torching of Young Israel of Kings Bay Synagogue. Please join me in thanking Mr. Ali, a Brooklynite, by way of Pakistan, whose actions exemplify the very best of Brooklyn! The name "Brooklyn" is known all over the world today. We need to capitalize on Brooklyn's worldwide reputation for excitement and creativity - and our world famous chutzpah and attitude. I want to brand Brooklyn - to develop a "Made in Brooklyn" logo and mindset, which will help sell Brooklyn products throughout the nation and the world. When I ran for this office, I said that while the borough presidency may not be the most important job in our city or state government, I would make it the most important public office for Brooklynites. I hope that my first year in office demonstrates that I meant what I said and I said what I meant. We are the people who are happy to call ourselves proud residents of the two greatest cities in the world - the city of New York and the city of Brooklyn." You can read his entire speech on his website at www.brooklyn-usa.org