City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams suggested she’s preparing for a greater challenge to her colleague across City Hall, Mayor Eric Adams, in her State of the City speech at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday.

“As a co-equal branch of government, our duty is to turn these ideas into effective laws and to conduct oversight,” the speaker said. “The council will begin conducting its own performance evaluations of city agencies, issuing report cards for individual agencies on their delivery of services to New Yorkers.”

It was one way the speaker showed how she wants the City Council to have a greater role in the way government works after winning a high-stakes fight over legislation by overriding the mayor’s veto of bills on NYPD reporting and solitary confinement in jails.

All while hitting on themes of affordability, livability and improving the basic function of government.

“We need to make sure those who keep our city running. Our essential workers, artists, entrepreneurs, small business owners and everyone in between can afford to live and work in the city they love,” the speaker said.

The city’s 3-K program for children was featured prominently in her remarks.

“With a lack of affordable childcare options and a weakened 3-K system, working and middle-class families are feeling they have no choice but to leave this city to provide their children with a better life,” the speaker said.

It foreshadowed the council’s priorities in its budget negotiations with the Adams administration.

“It was already high on the list even before this speech because everybody knows it’s an economic driver in order to keep families, in order to keep your job,” Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer said.

One point of agreement between the speaker and the mayor, who was in attendance, was more housing construction.

“Every one of us and the communities we represent have an equal responsibility,” the speaker said. “I am prepared - I’m prepared, mayor. I’m prepared to lead by example.”

The speaker then told the crowd she supports more housing development in her own backyard at the Aqueduct Race Track in her southeast Queens district, if a horse racing ends in the future.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards backed the idea.

“It’s a solid proposal. You look at the pinch New Yorkers are feeling. You look at how New Yorkers fleeing New York because of affordability. This is a perfect example of sound development,” he said.