Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani unveiled New York City’s $127 billion preliminary 2027 budget, warning of a $5.4 billion two-year gap thanks to chronic shortfalls and underfunded services. Savings drives and new tax revenue—buoyed by a $7.3 billion upwar…
Congresswoman Grace Meng’s invitation to New York Deputy Mayor Helen Arteaga to attend the State of the Union highlights Democratic resistance to President Trump’s hefty $1 trillion Medicaid cut—“One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—which closed 100 rural hospitals and threatens hundreds of nursing homes. The address’s official theme is “America at 250: Strong, Prosperous and Respected”, though “robust” seems a stretch for U.S. health care—at least outside Congress’s marble halls.
In a sign that last year’s ballot reforms are nudging New York’s housing politics into the present, Councilmember Vickie Paladino reluctantly advanced a 248-unit Bayside project—unthinkable pre-reform—facing override by the new citywide appeals board. With “member deference” dethroned and YIMBYs quietly triumphant, even the recalcitrant learn to bargain; although, as Paladino notes, not all council hands are happily forced. The city’s NIMBYs may require updated business cards.
New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is floating a 9.5% property tax increase in his $127bn budget to chip away at the city’s deficit, but utility customers may feel it most sharply—since firms like Con Edison and National Grid tend to pass such costs along. With local taxes already several times above the national average, we wonder if solace can be found in the city’s well-lit skyscrapers.
A report from the New York Housing Conference finds landlords of subsidized apartments filed over 43,000 eviction suits—more than a third of all such cases in New York City last year—as pandemic aftershocks and limp wage growth nudge even "affordable" rent out of reach. Calls for $17 million in new emergency aid may keep tenants and landlords afloat, at least until math and policy finally cohabitate.
New York City’s public schools reopened Tuesday after the region’s biggest blizzard in years, which dumped up to 24 inches of snow and left power out for thousands across New York and New Jersey. Transit agencies hustled to restore partial service, and black ice lingered into the morning, prompting cautious optimism—though some parents, facing unplowed streets, found the mayor’s can-do spirit perhaps a bit too bracing for their tastes.
After a snowstorm dumped up to three feet from New York to Warwick, Rhode Island, grinding mass transit, power and air travel to a halt, New Yorkers watched Mayor Zohran Mamdani press for schools to reopen, undeterred by heroic efforts from neighbors and a railroad plough named “Darth Vader.” As forecasters warn of a sequel, we hope Gotham’s snow days prove less impeachable than its politicians.
After a blizzard dumped heaps on New York City, subway service sputtered back to life with the familiar grace of a tossed snowball—delivering packed trains, smoky compartments, and delays that stretched into hours. The MTA suspended service on parts of the G and C lines after a train sparked and filled with smoke in Long Island City, but left explanations and communication behind, presumably stranded somewhere in the drifts.
New York’s Senate Majority Leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, insists Democrats aren’t eyeing any retreat from the state’s muscular 2019 climate law, despite Republicans’ alarm over surging energy bills—up 47% since 2019—and a chorus of 17 Democratic backbenchers demanding relief for the 1.28 million households deep in arrears. We expect the worthy quest to “save the planet” will remain an expensive hobby for many in Albany, at least for now.
