Photo by: Gerard Flynn

The stage awaits at Bill de Blasio’s election night victory party. Over the next year, we’ll be keeping tabs on what progress under the new mayor really looks like.

My world revolves around a spreadsheet listing stories City Limits is planning to run over the next six months. Articles on minority- and women-owned businesses, NYCHA, the hospital crisis, mental health courts and and child welfare. Coverage of Sunset Park, Brownsville and East New York on our Brooklyn site. On the Bronx Bureau, a focus on the heart of the borough, from Concourse Village up to Fordham Road.

Every few months, I extend the horizon, to June, to January, to June again. There will always be more stories to do. Or to want to do: There’s a separate list of topics (too juicy to publicize!) that we may never have the resources to pursue. It’s daunting and thrilling at the same time.

If you’re reading this, you know what City Limits is: a 37-year-old nonprofit news agency dedicated to using investigative and public-service journalism to cover policy in New York, with a special emphasis on housing, justice, schools and neighborhoods rarely covered by the mainstream. You know we’ve won national awards and spurred change, all with a staff of three and a budget under half a million dollars.

You also know the kind of stories we’ve done over the past year. City Council races that no one else touched. What income inequality really means and where it comes from. What happens to kids who are adopted into families that don’t work for them. Economic development, parks, the NYPD, lousy landlords, and the hopes and dreams of the high school Class of 2013.

And we did it all for free, at least as far as our readers are concerned.

To keep doing it, and to do it better, we need your support—not just your money, but your partnership. City Limits wants members who will spread the word about our stories, weigh in on the questions we raise, tell us when we’re wrong, point us to topics we’ve missed, join us in creating a more vibrant dialogue about the direction of the world’s greatest city and, yes, help us fund our journalism.

As we near the end of a year and the beginning of a new mayoral administration, it’s a time to take stock of what matters. You matter to us. If we matter to you, please click here to join and donate.