New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani struck a last-minute handshake deal with City Council Speaker Julie Menin on a colossal $125.8 billion budget for next year — a record spending plan that grows nearly every corner of city government while pointedly refusing to add a single new cop, the New York Post reported.
The agreement, reached just ahead of the July 1 deadline for the 2027 fiscal year, closely tracks the $124.7 billion executive budget the socialist mayor unveiled in May — but with one glaring omission. After activists, including the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, rallied at City Hall to protest a proposed NYPD headcount boost, Mamdani caved. The final plan drops the expansion that would have grown the force from 33,861 officers to 35,370, breaking with a Council that had fought publicly to put more cops on the street.
Menin, who helped broker the deal, did not hide her frustration with the police cut. “I strongly disagree with this decision and am deeply concerned about the public safety implications of walking away from a commitment that would have put more officers on our streets,” she said.
Council Minority Leader David Carr (R-Staten Island) went further, citing 20-plus-year veterans put back on foot patrol because the department is short-staffed. “Mamdani is playing a dangerous shell game with public safety, and New Yorkers are the ones who are going to lose,” he said.
While the mayor found no room for more police, he found plenty for everything else. The budget layers a new $175 million rental-assistance program on top of the $1.7 billion already committed to housing vouchers — a benefit that cost taxpayers just $25 million a year in 2019 and that budget hawks warn could balloon toward $4 billion annually. The Department of Education is set to draw $37.9 billion and the Department of Social Services $14.6 billion, dwarfing the $6.59 billion earmarked for the NYPD.
Mamdani entered office sounding the alarm over a supposed $12 billion shortfall, blaming his predecessor, Eric Adams. He has since quietly revised that gap down to $5.4 billion — a hole he insists can be closed only by taxing the rich or hiking property taxes nearly 10% across the board. Critics called the ultimatum a pressure tactic aimed at forcing a millionaires’ tax through Albany.
In the end, Gov. Kathy Hochul papered over roughly $4 billion of the gap with what the Post described as “largely kick-the-can measures,” plus a new pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes that she and Mamdani claim will raise $500 million a year — a figure city Comptroller Mark Levine says is about $200 million too high.
A record budget, a bigger government and a tax hike on the horizon — and not one additional officer to show for it. Let that sink in.
Source: nypost.com
