The newly elected president of Manhattan, Scott Stringer, is ready to get to work implementing his 100-page policy agenda, but there’s an important matter he must deal with first: ripping out the dark pink carpeting that his predecessor installed in the large corner office that is now his.

“I’m not against pink,” Mr. Stringer said yesterday with a smirk. “We just wanted to do something that would sort of suit me more. We’re going to have standard government-issued carpeting.”

Just three days into his new job, Mr. Stringer, a six-term assemblyman who beat out eight opponents to land the borough president post, is already preparing to make some significant changes that go far beyond the look of his office.

His agenda includes “reforming” and “empowering” Manhattan’s 12 community boards, capitalizing on the relatively small amount of power his office has in development issues, and pushing for more affordable housing by lobbying for zoning that includes units priced below market level.

“We’re totally revamping how this place is going to operate,” he said. “It’s going to be high energy.”

Although the city’s five borough presidents were sapped of much of their power when the Board of Estimates was deemed unconstitutional in 1989, Mr.Stringer is determined to spin straw into gold.

“No one can tell me that this office is weak or that it’s been weakened,” the 45-year-old Upper West Sider told The New York Sun during an interview. “That is a discussion for a different era in the city’s history. We have to get over the fact that we don’t have a Board of Estimates anymore. We haven’t had one in a long time.”

He said the office, which has a $4 million budget and a staff of about 60, does not have enough power “to go it alone,” but he said much can be accomplished if good relationships are established with the mayor, the new City Council speaker, and other elected officials.

During the campaign to succeed C. Virginia Fields, he enjoyed a shared front-runner status and received more union endorsements than the others campaigning for the job.

However, he was accused by one of his opponents, Eva Moskowitz, of circumventing campaign finance laws by allowing the Working Families Party to conduct voter outreach efforts on his behalf and was criticized by another opponent for accepting campaign donations from real estate interests.

Many seem to have strong expectations for his tenure. The walls in his 19th-floor office, which overlooks City Hall in Lower Manhattan, are still bare (he began moving in Tuesday) and he does not yet have a full staff.

Mr. Stringer has already sent out questionnaires to community boards to gauge their concerns and has started popping in on their meetings. He was at Community Board 10 in Harlem earlier this week.

The district manager of Community Board 1, Paul Goldstein, said yesterday that he has already had several conversations with Mr. Stringer’s office and has an appointment to meet with his staff in two weeks.

Mr. Goldstein said some of the people he heard from were “a little surprised” by the length and technical level of the Mr. Stringer’s questionnaire. But the borough president appoints board members, so he is likely to get a high return rate.

“I don’t think people are familiar with his positions vis-a-vis community boards yet,” Mr. Goldstein said.

The interim dean of public affairs at Baruch College, David Birdsell, said he expects Mr. Stringer to be more policy oriented than Ms. Fields.

“It’s the same job, it doesn’t come with any more power,” Mr. Birdsell said. “But I think you have a person who is going to spend a lot more time looking at the mechanics of government and how to make those mechanics more effective. I think you’re going to see a somewhat more policy-oriented borough presidency.”

Mr. Stringer said he wants to have a cooperative relationship with the city’s four other borough presidents. When asked how he’ll stack up next to the president of Brooklyn, Marty Markowitz, who has become something of a character and cheerleader, he said he will have his own style. He added that they both have African Grey talking parrots, so they have that as common ground at the very least.

He smiled and said: “And, I may challenge Marty to a hula hoop contest.”

Mr. Stringer comes from a political family. His mother was a council member and his father was counsel to Mayor Beame. His first job in politics was stuffing envelopes for Bella Abzug, his distant cousin, on her successful 1972 congressional campaign.

While some have already speculated that he will try to use his new job as a steppingstone for higher office, yesterday he was focused on his new responsibilities. With his office towering over City Hall, he has a bird’s-eye view. “Watch out! I’m watching you, Mike,” he joked, leaning out the window.

Mr. Stringer will deliver his inaugural address Sunday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.