Meet Kayla Santosuosso, who’s running for City Council in Bay Ridge. Our councilmember is our most important local elected official. Handling quality-of-life issues for the neighborhood, they are our advocate in city government and budgeting. And for the first time in nearly eight years, there is an open election with no incumbent. Our current Councilmember, Justin Brannan, is term-limited and can’t seek re-election.

So Kayla, a longtime neighborhood activist, small-business owner, and friend of the podcast, has jumped into the race. Join us as Kayla discusses some of her interests, goes through her lengthy qualifications, and gives a few hints at what she has planned for Bay Ridge if she wins the primary in June and the General Election in November.

Learn More…

If you’d like to learn more about some of the topics discussed in this episode, we recommend the following articles and links as a starting point:

• We mentioned Kayla was on the podcast before! She appeared in our fourth episode: Lies, Dog Whistles, and Statistics.
• Sadly, since this episode was recorded, Kayla and her husband announced the closure of Lockyard. This episode in a way serves as a brief overview of the storied bar’s pandemic era.
• Rachel mentions watching a documentary about the El-Yateem campaign in which Kayla features prominently. It’s called “Father K” and it’s available to watch online on Amazon Video.
• We also mentioned Justin Brannan’s promises before he got elected. You can check out our interview from 2017, A School of Our Own, where Justin promises more schools and parks (a promise which he delivered on).

Audio Bookmarks

Show Transcript

Dan:  Hey there, and welcome to Radio Free Bay Ridge, your Hyperlocal Progressive podcast focused exclusively on beautiful Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I’m Dan.

 Rachel: And I’m Rachel.

 Dan: And we’re in the studio again. Happy New Year, Rachel.

Rachel:  Happy New Year!

Dan:  Well, not really a studio, it’s now moved down to my dining room. Ever since COVID, I changed our tiny little studio set up. But it means we have more room at this nice table for guests and all kinds of stuff for the new year…

Rachel:  Like donuts and bagels.

 Dan: Oh my gosh, yes. Our guest today (who we’re not gonna introduce yet because we have to talk about some stuff), gets brownie points for being the first guest in the history of the podcast to have brought snacks.

Rachel:  Very good snacks.

Dan:  But, we’re a political podcast. So let’s start the year talking about politics, right?

Tagging Justin Brannan

Rachel:  It’s 2025. So we’ve got a council election on our hands.

Dan:  Most people don’t realize city council people are term limited. Our current representation for the past, what? Eight… how many years?

Rachel: Seven.

Dan:  Seven years now, has been Justin Brannan. If you’ve been on any Bay Ridge Facebook pages, you’ve probably seen him tagged. And it’s usually for things like, “Oh, I’d like a, a pothole fixed” or “Look at this 20 foot wide sinkhole that opened up on Marine Avenue.”

Rachel: *laughing* Or, “Why are there fireworks?”

Dan: *laughing* Why fireworks?  Question mark. Some of those tags are like, absolutely ridiculous. Like “I saw a cat that I didn’t like”. But then there’s other like cutie things, like, “Can we get seal updates for a seal that’s down at Denyse wharf?”

Rachel:  Bird rescues? We’ve seen bird rescues.

What Is City Council?

Dan:  Yeah. So for people whose only exposure to Justin Brennan or City Council in general are tags like that, what do city council people like actually do?

Rachel:  So with city council, there’s a blend of two responsibilities. There’s the constituent service, and then there’s the legislative work in the actual city council passing laws that govern our city.

Dan:  And our city council district starts in Coney Island, and then it wraps down through Gravesend and a little bit of Bath Beach and Dyker, and also a lot of Bay Ridge. But the city council also is the balance on the mayor. And the mayor’s race is also coming up this year, right?

Rachel: Mm-hmm.

Dan: For 2025?

Rachel:  Mm-hmm. Yep. Gonna be able to elect somebody to replace Adams. Yes.

Dan:  I mean, please do. But whoever the next City Council is made of, one of their critical roles is the budget for the city. They propose the budget collectively. And then the mayor is like, this is what I want the budget to be. And then they fight back and forth. And that’s really the big balance/counterbalance that happens. And then it’s of course proposing laws. City Council is the legislative body, they’re the Congress of New York City.

And then there’s all the constituent services. If you have any problems in the neighborhood, they’re one of the places you can call and they kind of boost it and get agencies to respond maybe a little bit faster, which is why people tag Justin on Facebook, right?

Rachel: Mm-hmm.

Dan:  And the City Council has been around since New York was chartered. It used to be the Board of Alderman. And in more recent history, our Councilperson was Marty Golden. He was our city council person, and then he moved to state senate. And then it was Vincent Gentile for a lot of the nineties and 2000’s. And the guy who answered the phones and did all the pothole stuff for Gentile was Justin Brannan. And then when Gentile left office, Justin took over as city council person and won that election, which is at the very start of our podcast.

Rachel:  One of the first sets of issues we dealt with was a set of proposals from the Republican candidate at the time, and some promises Justin made in terms of what he wanted to accomplish in the neighborhood. That really gave us the basis of our podcast.

Dan:  You can go back to those episodes and listen to them to get an idea about how Justin got into office. We spoke to him at that time and we’re like, “What are your big promises?” and he’s like, “I’m gonna build X number of schools and renovate X number of parks.”, and spoiler, we have those now.

Rachel:  Spoiler alert, it worked. Yeah.

Dan:  I think he overshot the number he promised.

Rachel: Um, significantly.

 Dan: And that brings us to the fact that Justin is term limited out. So he is currently running for comptroller, which leaves that position vacant for the first time in eight years. So we expect, you know, Republicans are gonna dash for it, but we also have Democratic candidates already announced that is hoping to replace Justin.

Which brings us to the guest who’s sitting just to my left, who has been quiet as we’ve gone over the history of city council. Kayla, welcome to the show!

Introducing Kayla

Kayla:  Good morning.

 Dan: Welcome back.

Kayla: Yeah, because I was here after the El-Yateem campaign in 2017, right? Back in the old studio.

Dan: Yeah, when it was upstairs.  We did an analysis of the City Council debate. That was, I think, between Quaglione and Justin.

Rachel: And Bob Capano. Don’t leave out Bob Capano.

Dan:  Bob Capano showed up to the AAANY debate. And he insulted every like Arabic person in the audience. Oh my God. That was a shit show.

Kayla: Yeah.

Dan: But I loved analyzing all of their bullsh…

Kayla:  Are you ready for that again? Are you ready for a new round of shit show? Because that’s what 2025 is gonna hold.

Rachel:  We are so ready.

Dan:  I mean, it seems like the debates are something that have stopped. It’s gotten so polarized. The people that are willing hold the debates are too partisan, so there’s no neutral moderator. I haven’t seen a debate for a local elected office really since we were complaining about Dan Donovan not holding town halls.

Rachel:  Can you even imagine Nicole Malliotakis holding a town hall?

What it feels like to run.

Dan: *to Kayla*  And wanna jump into politics amidst all this???

Kayla:  I know I’m a masochist clearly. *laughter* I do want to jump into it. I think it’s funny, every time I talk to somebody about undertaking this I tell them, honestly, I’m excited and I’m also scared because I think if you’re not actually scared to do this… if you’re not legitimately fearful of the undertaking, the effort that it’s going to require to run the amount of work that you’re gonna do, if you win and you’re in office, like, it is daunting. And if you have somebody who thinks it’s all goodness and glory, then they probably shouldn’t be running for office in the first place.

 So, yes, I wanna do it. It’s like a 70% I wanna do it and I’m 30% scared, but we’re gonna go ahead anyway.

Disclaimers

 Dan: Yeah. And we do have to have a disclaimer on here because again, we’ve known you for so long. You are a good friend of ours. We volunteered for things that you helped run and we’re biased in this interview.

 Rachel: I think that was something we wanted to make really clear from the get go. We’re supporting Kayla. Kayla is our candidate. In 2018 we did a series of six, hour-long interviews with all these different candidates for Congress. That’s not happening this time around.

Dan:  Yeah. Well also, there aren’t six candidates  that we’ve never heard of that were all from Staten Island who Bay Ridge people need to know about. This episode is for the people who, if you haven’t been involved in politics in Bay Ridge for the last eight years, you might not know who Kayla is. But if you have been involved, you probably do know who Kayla is.  And if you know Kayla, and this is still also for you. We’re gonna get into the weeds on some additional things and learn about the campaign.

But it’s inherently biased ’cause she brought us bagels.

Kayla: *laughter*  That was my thought the whole time. I was like, are we still friends? The bagels will test it. The bagels will push me over the line.

 Dan: So with that out of the way, we can just be ourselves for this interview.

Kayla’s Opening Pitch

Kayla:  I’m Kayla Santosuosso and I’m running for City Council in District 47, which is southern Brooklyn from Bay Ridge to Coney Island, and some wonderful neighborhoods in between.

I’m running for City Council because I think that we on a local level need effective, responsive leadership from people who have experience in the neighborhood and know what it means to live a bunch of different lives in this neighborhood. And I have worn many different hats. I came to this neighborhood to run an immigrant services nonprofit in 2013, which was the Arab American Association of New York. I was a deputy director there for three years, overseeing programs, securing funding, et cetera. I left that and became a campaign manager for Khader El-Yateem in 2017, and right at the end of that campaign, I entered law school as an evening student.

I worked in the daytime first for an anti-poverty foundation, which gave emergency cash grants to working people who don’t have savings accounts, essentially across New York City. Anonymous cash grants. It’s an amazing organization. After about a year and a half there, Justin, now fully in office, asked me to join his team. So I began working for him in 2019 while I was going to law school at night. Worked for him until I graduated from law school and was taking the bar exam in 2021. And then after I graduated and passed the bar, I was a city attorney for the New York City Law Department for three years defending taxpayer dollars in court in civil cases. And recently have come back to my old roots and old haunt and am back at Justin Brennan’s office as his chief counsel.

Why is Kayla running?

Dan: You know what you’re getting into.  You’ve seen multiple candidacies come and go. You were kind of on the sidelines. Now you’re in the center seat.

 Kayla: Yeah. It’s a very weird transition, let me tell you that. And it’s funny because back when we were in the beginning stages of running Khader El-Yateem for City Council in 2017, I don’t think we had even launched or announced yet, and we were in the early stages of building a team, and I was on the train. And I accidentally met Abdullah Younus, who lives in Bay Ridge and at the time was doing no political work at all, I think. And we met and had a conversation and he said, I wanna get coffee with you. We met up. He gave me this pitch where he was like, listen, I’m a part of DSA and we’re looking for candidates to back in the 2017 City Council races, and I really think that you would be great.

And I looked at him and I said, thanks so much. I’m so honored, but we’re actually running somebody else and I’d love to talk to you about it. And I tell you that because I think that there are some people who had in their mind for a long time that maybe I would run for office. But I was not one of them.

Transitioning from Staff to Candidate

Kayla: The thing that I’ve always liked about doing local electoral work is that I’ve always enjoyed the role of being professional hype-woman. I really love helping people do brave stuff. And that was part of running Father K. Part of that was working in Justin’s office. And so now being the person that goes out and puts myself forward is taking a whole new level of adjustment. Like, I have to be my own hype-woman, and I feel like am not qualified for that particular element of this role.

But I am qualified for everything else, which is why I’m running.

Rachel:  Well, you’ve got us to be your hype-people. Right?

Kayla: *laughs*  Exactly. I’ll just play this on loop, I guess, when I’m feeling down.

Experience is Critical

Kayla:  But self-deprecation aside, I’m excited. I do know a lot about this and I think that’s really important.

 And something that I’ve learned since 2017. I mean, I think in, in 2017 there were a lot of reasons for us to want to run somebody who had no real experience within the political system. Mm-hmm. We were running an amazing candidate who had all kinds of experience outside of the political system and in community board and in community organizations. I think that was legitimate, and I know why we were doing that back then. It had to do with community demographics and making sure the Arab community had a voice. But something that I’ve learned since then is that the job of being a City Council member actually really requires someone who knows what they are doing.

Dan: Yeah.

 Kayla: And earlier when you were talking about what the role of City Council is, I agree with you. But I also think of City Council as someone who cracks the whip on city agencies.

 And to be effective at that, you have to know who to contact for this pothole or that sinkhole. That’s an important part of the job. It also helps to know how to manage a City Councilmember’s budget and how to run an office and what it means to propose legislation, to fight for getting your bill to the floor, to get your co-sponsors.

It’s fine if you have somebody who has no experience. You know, there’s certain positives that people bring when they come from outside of the system. But I guess I’ve kind of warmed up to the idea that maybe we should have people in the role that have been trained in actually doing it. And I think that’s why I ultimately decided to run. I know how to act as a City Councilmember because I’ve been working in that office and I know how to do the job. And I also have the experience of having run a neighborhood nonprofit and having owned a small business in the neighborhood. So I have, I think, the kind of resume that justifies running. And it took a while for me to come around to that realization.

 Dan: You’ve checked a couple of boxes, where some campaigns rely on just one, right? I’ve worked in the city council person’s office, vote for me. Or, I’m a small business owner, vote for me. I’ve run a nonprofit, vote for me. But you’re trying to cram five qualifications through the door!

Kayla:  I would definitely qualify my life as trying to cram everything in. That is the story.

Rachel: What I think is really interesting about what you were just saying is that you came from outside the system and you’ve moved into a position of understanding the system. I can’t help but think with the new administration nationally, having somebody in the role who knows what they’re doing is gonna be absolutely critical.

 Kayla: It’s important because we basically have no time to waste, right?

 having somebody who can come in ready on day one, I think is just advantageous. I also think that’s particularly important given that Justin has been, even among people that disagree with him, I think everybody agrees that he’s responsive and that he’s accessible, and we are used to a very effective, responsive, local representative and.

Any time lost between the election and someone trying to figure out how to do the job is going to create a problem. So I agree with you. To protect our city, we need to have strong leadership on a local level that’s qualified and knows how to do the job. But also, big shoes to fill is putting it mildly. So…

Rachel:  Yeah, I can’t imagine what would happen if we went a week without somebody responding to one of these tags on Facebook. The entire neighborhood would explode.

Dan:  Do you commit, Kayla, to responding to Bay Ridge Talks questions?

Kayla:  It’s funny because I think Justin Brannan set such a high standard with that.

Let’s be real about this. There is no way that going into this race, I have anywhere near any of the name recognition that Justin did when he went in, because you’re right, he built that reputation of “I’m gonna respond to all of these Facebook tags”. And admittedly, that’s not my brand, but it is probably what the next council member needs to do. So maintaining that level of accessibility is definitely something I’m committing to.

Dan:  Bay Ridge Talks people, you can now close the podcast. That’s all you need to know. But also, people don’t realize that was a recent innovation. You couldn’t talk to your politicians like that before Justin Brannan.

Tagging your Councilmember was not a thing in 2016. I couldn’t contact Vincent Gentile, and before that I definitely couldn’t contact Marty Golden, even when he was State Senator, by tagging him online.

Kayla’s Goals for Bay Ridge and Coney Island

Dan: Justin kind of set out these are the things that I wanna accomplish. So first serious journalistic question.  What would you like to see changed when you are done with your eight years in city council?

 Kayla: And I have to do a little bit of Coney Island too. I know we’re Radio Free Bay Ridge, but  I’m gonna dip into Coney Island too.

So, as you mentioned, Justin committed to basically redoing every park and playground in Bay Ridge.  I wanna continue that for Coney Island. They need it just as much as we did, if not more, before Justin took over.

 And here in Bay Ridge, I wanna continue that by making sure that there are accessible, open, clean, and safe bathrooms in every park and on the pier. Access to bathrooms and running water is a major issue, not just for folks who are disabled or are athletes that use the parks, but also families that bring their kids.  And we get a lot of complaints in the office about bathroom availability, so I really wanna work on that across the district, Bay Ridge to Coney Island, for sure.

 This is a bit of a pipe dream, but the Owl’s Head Wastewater Treatment Plant has not seen an infrastructure overhaul in over 15 years.  I don’t know if everybody else feels this way, but I personally think like the smell that is emanating from Owl’s Head wastewater treatment plant is getting worse. So I would like to try to commit some serious capital funding to try to overhaul the wastewater treatment plant.

Rachel:  I remember in 2018 knocking doors on the side of Owl’s Head Park that faces the waste treatment plant. Every single door, they said, “What is he gonna do about the smell? What is he gonna do about the smell?”

Kayla:  Yeah.

Rachel:  And that was different, it wasn’t for a city council race, but it’s fantastic to know you’re serious about it.  I think that’ll make a big difference to a lot of people.

Kayla: Nobody’s ever said in the campaign handbook that you should run on bad smells, but I do think it’s a major quality of life issue. And listen, you know, a wastewater treatment plant is what it is. There will probably always be some odor that is gonna emanate from it, but in my mind it has definitely gotten worse over the years.  So I think we have to take a hard look at that.

There’s more on the Coney Island side that we could get into, but the other thing I really wanna make sure that we’re focusing on is street safety. We know that that has been a problem. We know how to fix it. And I just really think it needs to be prioritized.

 I had a friend of mine who was killed by a car on Fourth Avenue, and I just don’t ever wanna see that again in the neighborhood. So street safety is something that I think I want to take a hard look at too.

 Dan: Okay, the infrastructure guy on the other side of the table is happy. I’m just like, “ooh, wastewater treatment.”  I’m holding back from talking about combined sewer overflows and like water retention systems and things like that.

 Rachel: Not to mention you’re the chair of the pedestrian Street Safety Committee at Community Board 10 these days, so…

Dan:  Oh, yeah. I just got assigned that in December. So there’ll be a subcommittee on pedestrian safety that I will chair… let’s see how that goes.

Smaller Pet Projects: Ballfields and 86th Street

Kayla:  I also have a couple smaller pet projects that I’d like to mention. So, I have been a longtime softball player in the Shore Road ball fields, and our ball fields are in serious need of help down there.

Our bleachers are in dismal conditions. If I were to win, by the time I was out there would be completely new bleachers at the Shore Road ball fields, and also improved quality of the fields themselves. It’s important to me and the good men that play in the bar softball league, if not other leagues.

 The other thing I wanna look at is 86th Street. We are still waiting for a good flagship tenant to take over what used to be Century 21.

I first feel that I need to quell some of the complaints that people have about 86th Street. 86th Street is no longer vacant like it was in the days after COVID. We have a lot of new tenants. There’s a lot of new shops, et cetera.

But people feel that it’s not the same because Century 21 was such a beloved institution there and it took up so much space. I think people feel the absence of that pretty keenly. And when you took away that, and TJ Maxx, the shopping district of 86th Street feels like it’s no longer what I used to go there for.  And I feel that too personally.

So the owners of the Century 21 building have decided that they are gonna sell. After many years of trying to work with Justin and other local elected officials to try to build something that would drive back pedestrian traffic and make people happy, they decided in the end to sell the building.  That’s their prerogative.

So I do wanna work with whoever the new owner is to really get some high quality tenant that really will drive traffic. I’m not gonna make a promise of what that will be, but I care about that shopping corridor. A lot. And wanna make sure whatever ends up there is a good business.

— More transcription coming soon! —

This episode was recorded on January 4th, 2025 with Daniel Hetteix, Rachel Brody, and Kayla Santosuosso, in our studio located in beautiful Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Post-production and editing was done by Daniel Hetteix and Mary Hetteix.