Photo by: U.S. Navy

Mayor Bloomberg talks with World War II veterans during the Veterans Day parade in 2010.

There are around 225,000 veterans in New York City, about 18,000 of whom served in Iraq or Afghanistan. A grassroots organization, NYMetroVets, wants the next mayor of New York to do more to assist those former soldiers, sailors, airmen and women and Marines.

Their recommendations include making veteran-led businesses a preferential class for city contracts, a benefit that minority- and women-owned firms now enjoy.

They also want to appoint a sort of veterans employment czar, expand a tax-break to put vets on par with senior citizens and clergy members, increase housing options for veterans and strengthen a push by several local district attorneys to run “veterans courts,” which deal with offenses by veterans linked to drug and mental-health issues that might have grown out of their military service.

See the entire briefing paper below.