Rolling out his $127 billion preliminary budget, Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered New Yorkers two fiscal painkillers: raise property taxes by 9.5% or target the city’s millionaires and big firms via higher income and business levies. Despite $1.77 billi…
After a month-long freeze, work on the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel beneath the Hudson River—connecting New York and New Jersey—is set to resume this week, following a court order forcing Washington to release $235 million in withheld funds. Some 1,000 laid-off laborers are dusting off their shovels, though with $15 billion still unforthcoming, the commission’s enthusiasm may yet encounter another tunnel at the end of the light.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to lift property tax rates by 9.5%, part of a $127bn budget bid to patch a gaping deficit, may also mean steeper electricity and gas bills for residents, as utility giants like Con Edison tend to pass higher taxes straight to customers—a tradition as dependable as the city’s subway delays, if somewhat less enchanting.
A nor’easter turned New York City into a snow globe this week, burying LaGuardia Airport under more than 22 inches and prompting Mayor Zohran Mamdani to declare a state of emergency. With all but essential traffic banned and schools closed, the city hunkered down while winds whipped up to 55 mph—leaving us to dig out, grumble, and perhaps secretly treasure a snow day’s enforced pause.
A report from the New York Housing Conference says landlords of supposedly affordable, subsidized apartments filed over a third of the city’s 120,000 eviction cases in 2024, largely for unpaid rent as job losses, stagnant wages, and inflation pinch tenants. Proposals for faster aid distribution and a $17 million “diversion court” now await Albany’s notoriously deliberate lawmakers—proof, perhaps, that even budget housing in Gotham is a luxury adjusted for optimism.
After a historic winter storm swept the US Northeast, airlines gingerly resumed operations, though more than 2,000 flights remained canceled Tuesday—an improvement from Monday’s 5,700, per FlightAware. Boston’s Logan, along with Newark and LaGuardia, still saw half their flights stuck, snowdrifts be damned. American, Delta, and United scrambled to reroute passengers. Travelers can hope the only thing in the air tomorrow will be their planes, not 58cm of snow.
After a blizzard dumped up to 24 inches of snow on New York and power outages lingered across New Jersey, schools in the city reopened Tuesday, prompting over 170,000 to petition Mayor Zohran Mamdani for a switch to online learning. Plows and repair crews worked overtime, but some politicians called the return “hasty”—proof, perhaps, that for New Yorkers, snow days are the real nonrenewable resource.
New York’s new affordable housing appeals board—devised by 2025’s ballot measures—is nudging die-hard skeptics, like Queens Councilmember Vickie Paladino, toward uncharacteristic “yes” votes. The threat of override prodded her to accept a 248-unit Bayside development she plainly dislikes. Member deference in land use may be on life support; in New York politics, even sacred cows can now receive an eviction notice.
New York City dusted itself off after the Northeast’s heftiest blizzard in a decade buried Warwick, Rhode Island, under a record three feet of snow and grounded thousands of flights. Power returns faltered, schools reopened—Mayor Zohran Mamdani undeterred by mountains of slush—while weary parents eyed the icy commute. Meteorologists hint at more white-knuckle weather, though, as they say, lightning seldom strikes twice in February.
