Wednesday's Headlines: The Budget Fix Is In Edition

Big spending socialist, he’s not. At least not yet.

Mayor Mamdani on Tuesday announced that his team had closed the city’s $12-billion budget gap thanks to higher-than-expected tax receipts, “cost savings” and a lot of help from Albany.

Gov. Hochul confirmed that the state will chip in $4 billion to support the city’s budget, in addition to cutting the city slack on a costly state class-size mandate. The full list of ways Mamdani managed to close the budget gap is almost too boring to go into detail: In short, he convinced Hochul to tax the rich a little bit and give him a bunch of money. He also found savings in the city’s rental assistance program, and wrung another $1.77 billion over two years in savings out of individual agencies. And he squeezed another $69 million by eliminating an income tax deduction for small business owners.

Budget hawks like the Empire Center and Citizens Budget Commission fretted over the use of one-shot “gimmicks” and short-term fixes to fill the gap. National outlets like Bloomberg focused on the official demise of Mamdani’s threatened property tax hike. And Comptroller Mark Levine dubbed Mamdani’s spending plan “pretty modest,” according to City & State.

Despite Levine’s assessment, Mamdani managed to find new money for parks ($15 million), libraries ($31.7 million) and Fair Fares ($25 million). He announced plans to spend an additional $34.9 million this year on “Sammy’s Law and safe streets.” But he raised concerns by revealing “vacancy reductions” at the departments of Parks and Transportation — that means the city will eliminate some unfilled positions at those agencies, though we don’t yet know which.

Streetsblog will be hard at work in the coming days to figure out what it all means for livable streets and non-auto transportation. Until then, check out coverage in Gothamist, New York Focus and The City (to name a few).

In other news:

City greenway projects take too damn long. (Daily News)
Coming soon from Gov. Mikie Sherril’s “NJ Transit Rapid Action Plan”: lavender-scented stations, but not more reliable and frequent service. (ABC 7 NY, Gothamist, PIX11)
The World Cup may turn out to be a dud: Ticket prices are dropping and 75 percent of the city’s hotel rooms still haven’t been booked for the games. (The City)
Gov. Hochul will spend $6 million in state cash to bring World Cup shuttle bus tickets down from $80 to $20. And NJ Transit tickets are now “only” $98. (The Athletic)
Related: The Guardian tried to walk to MetLife Stadium.
Kevin Shen from the Union of Concerned Scientists dug into the corrosive effect the highway lobby has on society. (The Equation)
The art on the planters on Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue is beautiful. (Brooklyn Paper)
Safety improvements are coming to Forest Avenue on Staten Island. (S.I. Advance)
Gas prices are “wiping out wage gains”— more evidence that car ownership is a burden on working families. (WSJ)
Brad Lander wants to bring more money for greenways and mass transit home from Washington. (Miser via BlueSky)
Drivers struck three pedestrians in an hour in Borough Park last Friday. (Boro Park 24)
And finally, watch Council Member Chris Marte bike down Hudson Street: