Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first executive budget proposal pulls off what seems to be a fiscal miracle by closing what in December was projected to be a huge $12 billion budget gap without raising property taxes, dipping into reserves or cutting services.

But the budget is hardly a symbol of fiscal rectitude. It relies on billions of dollars in one-shot or short-term money to fund permanent programs, it stretches out pension payments so the next generation will pay for the retirements of present-day workers and it projects a $7 billion deficit for the 2028 fiscal year that will need to be closed just one year from now.

One sign of the problem: The mayor did not mention the deficits in future budgets in his presentation Tuesday of the $124.7 billion budget. Fiscal experts say they do not remember a time when a mayor didn’t acknowledge future year problems.

“Unlike pickles, budget balancing strategies aren’t good when they are half sour,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

The executive budget is the penultimate step in the city’s budget process and kicks off negotiations with the City Council with a final budget agreement due by June 30. 

Historically, the Council adds money to the budget, usually about $500 million each year, but the mayor appears to be trying to avoid that by increasing money for parks, libraries and CUNY, which are usually the top of the council’s priority list.

The mayor was able to close the budget deficit because Gov. Kathy Hochul both provided billions of dollars in additional funds — including authorizing a new pied-à-terre tax  on luxury second homes — and delayed a costly mandate for the city to reduce class sizes.

Much of the money is short-term. 

For example, the governor has promised $1.6 billion for only the first two years of the rollout of Pre-K for three-year-olds and expansion of the slots for four-year-olds. There is no money for future years when the program is expected to be growing rapidly.

Other so-called one-shots — meaning revenue for only one year is being used to support spending that is expected to continue in the future — include something called budget accruals.

The administration says it’s found $1.2 billion in money the city had set aside to pay old expenses that it won’t need to use for that purpose. The money will be used in 2027 to balance the budget — but it won’t be available in future years.

One-shots amount to $2.8 billion, Comptroller Mark Levine estimates, one major factor in why the budget deficit for the 2028 fiscal year is still so large.

The savings for delaying pension payments is particularly egregious for people who care about best budget practices. Unlike the state, whose pension system is fully funded because it makes the required payments each year, the city needs to deposit extra money each year to make up for years when it did not fully meet its obligations.

The pension deal agreed to by the mayor and the governor evens out volatile annual payments to allow more predictable budgeting. But it also stretches those extra payments out into the future, saving $2.3 billion in next year’s budget.

“Extending the amortization period for pension payments creates a debt that’s more expensive than muni bonds,” William Glasgall, an expert in public finances at the Volcker Alliance, said, referring to municipal bonds. Taxpayers will be footing the bill for today’s savings well into the 2030s.

What this budget does by relying on short-term fixes is set up yet another push for the mayor’s campaign promises to tax the rich next year, after the mid-term elections. 

Hochul is up for reelection in November, while the local impact of President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill will really start hitting home in 2027.

“We have known ever since the child care funding announcement that we will need future revenues,” said Emily Eisner, interim director of the progressive Fiscal Policy Institute, which has been aggressively supporting tax increases. “The governor is interested in avoiding taxes in a significant way before November but they are more likely after the election, especially since the major strains from the One Big Beautiful Bill don’t hit until next year.”

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani dropped his threat to hike property taxes as a way to close the budget gap after Gov. Kathy Hochul promised additional aid for his $124.5 billion spending plan.

The city budget includes an additional $4 billion in support to close the gap, totaling nearly $8 billion over two years.

That money is through $352 million in direct aid, $3.2 billion from programs that require state authorization and $500 million in new revenue — enough to close the $12 billion budget gap for the next two fiscal years that Mamdani inherited from his predecessor.

“I am proud to announce that we have closed the gap entirely, down to zero,” the mayor said at a press conference Tuesday.

“It hasn’t been easy but we have balanced the budget and we have done so without placing the burden on the backs of working New Yorkers.”

The mayor thanked Hochul, State Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, State Assembly Majority Carl Heastie and Council Speaker Julie Menin for their help and partnership, along with “the movement that carried us to City Hall.”

The budget, he said, “is evidence of a new era of government in our city, one that can balance both ambition and fiscal responsibility.”

The mayor’s budget manages to close a $5.6 billion shortfall for this fiscal year and an estimated $7 billion gap for next year without new income taxes for the wealthy and for corporations that he had demanded from Albany, and without raiding the city’s financial reserves. 

Jabs at the Wealthy

But Mamdani said they are taxing the rich through other changes, like a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes that is estimated to bring in $500 million in new revenue. 

There is also a proposal to reduce the Unincorporated Business Tax credit, known as UBT, which he noted mostly benefits millionaires. Reducing the tax credit will bring in an estimated $68 million, according to the mayor. 

“These are common sense measures,” he said. “Working New Yorkers cannot be asked to sacrifice as we sit in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.”

Pension Moves

Other revenue and savings comes from the state taking over expenses that shifted to the city years ago, like line of duty death benefits for families of first responders killed on the job, saving the city $202 million. There’s also an additional $600 million in youth programming and $300 million to restore money for sales tax intercepts.

The city will also seek state approval for pension amortization, which could save more than $2 billion by restructuring some payments over the next two years, which Mamdani assured wouldn’t affect benefits for current or retired city workers.

“I think there’s a logic to smoothing out payments,” city Comptroller Mark Levine said Tuesday morning after a budget briefing with the mayor and his team. 

“I think it’s easier to plan for the long term when you have a smooth payment schedule.”

More than $1 billion in savings comes through a delay in the state’s mandated cap on class sizes which would require hiring more teachers and administrators. Last year, the city approved hiring 3,700 more teachers and 100 more assistant principals.

Mamdani added more money to hire 1,000 additional teachers and $1.5 billion to the $7.6 billion existing budget for the School Construction Authority’s five-year capital plan.

The mayor is also working to rein in spending on some students whose private school tuition is paid for by the city when it’s found they can’t receive the same special education services at public schools. 

The cost of what’s known as “Carter” and “Connors” cases – depending on how the money is paid out – has increased 300% over the last decade, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat. Tuition costs can go as high as $144,000 per student.

To address this rising number of students, the Department of Education will invest more money in special education needs, like speech and occupational therapy, the mayor said.

Another major rising cost to the city’s budget is housing vouchers, specifically through the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, or FHEPS, program. 

The mayor is fighting a legal battle against implementing a package of laws the City Council passed in 2023 to expand eligibility for the vouchers. He promised to put the laws into effect as a candidate, but reversed once he took office due to budget pressures. 

Around 68,000 households rely on CityFHEPS vouchers, while another 47,000 could end up depending on the program if it’s expanded.

Mamdani plans to save $519 million within CityFHEPS, mostly through administrative changes, he said. 

The mayor announced new spending in his budget, including $40 million for the Office of Community Safety and $26 million towards hate crime prevention.

‘Conservative’ on New Spending

Levine, the comptroller, said there was a lot of “good news in this budget” but he was still cautious.

“We are entering into very uncertain economic times because of the threat of a recession and the impact of AI, and I want us to build a very strong fiscal foundation that grows reserves,” he said.

“There still is a reliance on a number of one-shot measures, and those are tools that are then going to be off the table next year. And we are looking at about a $7 billion shortfall for the following fiscal year.”

Levine did praise the mayor for his “pretty modest” additional spending.

Some of the additional money includes $31.7 million to the three library systems, $15 million to the Parks Department, $10 million to cultural organizations and $15 million to the City University of New York.

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen a mayor be this conservative on new spending,” Levine said about the spending. “It reflects why we’re in a better place today than we were in February.”

Mamdani had floated a property tax increase as a last-resort option to raise money to fill the gap, as Gov. Hochul continued to resist raising taxes.

Raising the property tax rate, which has not been done since Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is one of the few levers the mayor has to raise revenue. It was met with immediate backlash and was unlikely to pass in the Council. 

Hochul’s help to the city benefits the whole state, she said at an unrelated event Monday.

“He inherited a pretty significant financial mess,” Hochul said. 

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams took a cautious approach to the promised state aid.

“I think until that budget is passed, you don’t know if all that money is real,” he said following his briefing.

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A month before the first World Cup soccer match takes place at Met Life Stadium across the Hudson River, only 25% of the available rooms in New York City hotels have been booked for the six weeks when matches will be held.

FIFA says demand is unprecedented and that every one of the 104 matches across the country will be sold out, even as it continues to release tickets as match days approach. Meanwhile, resale prices for every match are falling in a sign of weak demand.

The sky high cost of actually getting to Met Life stadium and rapidly rising air fares as a result of the Iran war are two more blows to the event’s prospects.

The result is that an economic boost that FIFA claimed would exceed $3 billion for the New York area is likely to fall well short, leaving the city to spend far more on managing the event than it will receive in tax revenue and economic activity.

“The branding effect of the World Cup was always overstated because New York and New Jersey already have a lot of visibility internationally,” said Danielle Zanzalari, assistant professor of economics at Seton Hall University. “Places like Cincinnati and Kansas City would benefit more from the international exposure.”

No one has a single explanation for the disappointing hotel bookings and weak demand. High prices are one factor. A seat purchased directly from FIFA for the first match on June 13 for the lower bowl — where the views of the field are the best — originally cost $640, when the teams that would be playing had yet to be announced.

In the last two weeks, resale prices for that match between two highly ranked teams, Brazil and Morocco, have fallen by 9%, according to TicketData.com, which tracks that market.

Another complication is the unprecedented plan for the World Cup to hold matches in three countries — the United States, Mexico and Canada — which may be depressing visitors, says Julie Coker, CEO of New York City Tourism + Conventions.

“We can’t ignore the broader environment,” added Virginia Maloney, the chair of the City Council’s economic development committee, which has held hearings on the World Cup. The war with Iran has made international travelers nervous and the Trump administration has made it difficult for visitors from many countries to get visas.

Big events like the World Cup or the Olympics need to generate enough demand that they  overcome the loss of tourists who avoid that city because of high prices or fears of overcrowding. But biggest declines in occupancy compared with 2025 occur on the eight days of matches being held at Met Life, showing that tourists are especially avoiding New York on those days.

According to CoStar, which tracks hotel occupancy and room rates, only a third of New York City rooms are spoken for on June 13 — 12 percentage points below the year ago. Even for the much anticipated World Cup final on July19, only 20% of rooms are taken.

Those vacancies will take a toll on the city budget – which is already in the grip of a $5.6 billion shortfall.

Earlier this spring, city Comptroller Mark Levine estimated that even if FIFA’s prediction that 1.2 million people would visit New York for the event came true, the additional tax revenue would be no more than $55 million, while the city is expected to spend $70 million in additional costs for the NYPD, emergency management, and small business support. 

If the number of visitors falls short, the gap between added tax revenue and costs will widen.

Councilmember Maloney notes that legislation pending in Albany that would allow bars and restaurants to expand outdoor activities during the matches could help increase economic activity. She is also lobbying the Mandani administration to reconsider a policy that will restrict some event permits for city parks during the six weeks of the World Cup, which was instituted to conserve police resources.

“Our neighborhood-level, community-run, often free programming that serves the people who live here has been shut out in the process,” she said in a letter to the mayor and police commissioner. “Give New Yorkers back their summer.”

Some officials like Coker note that New York is actually doing better than other host cities in terms of rooms booked and she says the trend is improving. “In March, we were down 11 percentage points for those weeks compared to 2025. Now we are down only 6 percentage points,” she told THE CITY.

Hotels have begun to reduce rates. The bellwether Midtown Hilton on Sixth Avenue is currently asking $490 a night for its least expensive room for the four days before the first match on June 13, down from $533 a month ago. It is not sold out.

City Hall didn’t return a mesage seeking comment. 

In the meantime, even those who purchased tickets are waiting for FIFA to send them the actual tickets – with their actual seat numbers — and, with no parking at Met Life and a rail ticket to Met Life from Penn Station costing $110 a person, wondering what they are in for and how much it will cost.

“My spouse is going to the June 16 match and he’s not even sure how to get there,” said Zanzalari, who lives in Summit, N.J. — which is only 20 miles from the stadium.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday announced a $268 billion state budget deal but the state assembly speaker shot back, saying there was no agreement.

Hochul said the disputed New York state budget agreement included a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes, investments in universal child care and more money for police officers on the subway. Her budget did not appear to include additional additional cash to help New York City fix its $5.4 billion deficit.

But Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie later told reporters Hochul had jumped the gun.

“There is no budget deal,” Heastie said, adding, “I don’t care what the governor says.”

“I said to her last night I was comfortable with her saying to y’all we were close  — it is close,” Heastie, of The Bronx, said. “But this is what’s wrong with this process. It’s like, ‘I’m gonna only talk about policy and when I think the legislature is giving me what I want on policy, then we’ll talk about money.’”

Heastie said he planned to send his members home on Thursday.

“We signed off on nothing major,” he said. “I’m never doing this again. Budgets are supposed to be about money, not policy.”

Hochul had no immediate comment.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, Hochul’s Republican challenger, said the budget snafu reminded him of the reality show “Deal or No Deal.”

“This is the left hand not knowing what the left hand is doing,” he said of the intraparty squabbling. “The fact of the matter is it’s the height of incompetence, it’s a lack of leadership.”

Budget One Month Late

Hochul’s budget, which was due April 1, is $13 billion more than last year’s and $8 billion more than Hochul initially proposed.

The “general agreement” on the budget was still light on details as the legislature will continue to go over the proposal in the coming days, the governor said.

“I’m not going to mince the words. The negotiations were not easy,” Hochul said.

“There were very substantive disagreements, tough choices and powerful special interests trying to influence the outcome, and the dysfunction out of Washington certainly doesn’t help.”

Here’s what we know about the state budget deal:

• The governor said legislators are finalizing details of on a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes to help “close the city’s budget gap without eroding its tax base or burdening hard-working New Yorkers.”

• Hochul said the budget includes her proposal to streamline environmental reviews for housing developments, letting some projects skip a 51-year-old state law requiring an extensive review that often holds up construction. 

• And the budget includes a “super speeder” bill which would require drivers with 16 or more speed-camera tickets over a year to install a device that would limit the car’s speed based on the local speed limit. 

Unanswered Questions

While the top question on Thursday was what led to the public breakdown between Hochul and Heastie — and when a proper deal might emerge — the details of key provisions were still up in the air.

• That second-home tax: It remains to be seen how the pied-à-terre tax would work. Specifically, how would the “value” of a second home be measured? Market values change, and assessed values are wildly out of whack, which could leave many lux pads out. There’s also a question about how to tax second homes owned by LLCs or shell companies. 
• Pension reforms: Hochul teased that she was scaling back plans to enact sweeping pension reform for the more than 700,000 public sector workers on what is called Tier 6, who receive smaller pension benefits than employees hired before 2012. Unions want changes that would cost $1.5 billion a year. It’s not clear how much — or how little — Hochul and the legislature are prepared to expand Tier 6 benefits. 
• Climate law: With qualms about affordability and facing headwinds from the Trump administration’s hostility to renewable energy projects, Hochul has made no secret that she’d like to weaken the state’s ambitious 2019 climate law. Under the budget deal, the governor can now implement those regulations in 2028, while using a different formula to count emissions — making it easier for the state to hit its reduction targets.

Hochul to City: I’ve Done Plenty

Hochul’s announcement did not include additional commitments of state funds for the cash-strapped city. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Council Speaker Julie Menin last week pitched the state on a change to the pass-through entity tax, or PTET, which lets some business people keep state and local tax deductions that were limited by a 2017 federal law. They believe those changes could bring in $1 billion in revenue.

Hochul, who is running for reelection in November, immediately shot it down, and didn’t say whether the proposed budget includes any more of a bailout for the city. 

On Friday, she defended what she’s already doing for the five boroughs, pointing to more than $1 billion to support universal childcare and another $1.5 billion to help close the gap.

“We’ve been asked to do a lot for the city, we’ve given unprecedented amounts of support for the city,” she said.

The City Council approved an extension for Mayor Mamdani’s executive budget, which was due around May 1, because of the tardiness of the state’s budget. 

On Thursday, the mayor – a former state assemblymember –  said he planned to release his executive budget next week as planned. And he expected the city would get what it needed to help close the budget gap.

“I’m feeling hopeful about the direction of those negotiations,” he said at an unrelated press conference. “Those were productive conversations.”

Contributing: Samantha Maldonado, Claudia Irizarry Aponte.

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When the Independent Budget Office and the city comptroller released their annual economic and budget review late last year, they projected that New York City would add about 40,000 jobs in 2025, mostly home health care jobs.

But when the final numbers came out in the spring, the state labor department said the city had actually lost 20,000 jobs — with a sharp reduction in home health care jobs.

Now a report from economist James Parrott says that the city in fact added 22,000 jobs last year.

What happened? According to Parrott, senior adviser to the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, the state Department of Labor’s numbers on home health care jobs have been inaccurate for the last two years. What does it mean? It will be very hard to know what is happening with the city economy this year, which could affect everything from economic development efforts to projections of city tax revenues.

“Unless you make a hard adjustment in the data to correct for the misreporting of homecare jobs, we’re left with a distorted view of the city’s economy and job market,” Parrott said.

How Economists Track Employment

Every month, the U.S. Department of Labor asks 600,000 employers nationwide how many jobs they added or shed. That may not seem like a lot, but political polls routinely report who is ahead in a presidential race by reaching no more than 3,000 voters and often as few as 1,000. The New York City job numbers are based on the reports of the local employers.

In the spring, those numbers are revised based on unemployment insurance taxes paid by all employers. These numbers are more comprehensive.

What Went Wrong?

Home health care employment surged between 2022 and 2025 when the state began allowing relatives and friends to be paid for providing care to seniors and disabled clients under the state’s Medicaid program. The state also allowed 600 social service agencies to be involved to hire and pay them. It became very difficult to track how many people had been hired and where they were working.

In the spring of 2025, to control costs, the administration of Gov. Kathy Hochul established a single intermediary for the hiring of all health aides, which resulted in more precise data. Parrot says the new information showed that the labor department had overstated the number of those jobs in the city and understated those outside the city.

So, What Are the Real Job Numbers?

As a result, says Parrott, the city actually gained about 22,000 jobs, which — while much slower than in recent years — was considerably better than the national jobs increase in percentage terms. 

Other economists who track the city’s economy told THE CITY they believed Parrott’s work was accurate. 

A spokesperson for the state Labor Department didn’t return a request for comment. 

What Does This Mean for 2026?

Since the revised 2025 state labor department numbers are not accurate, it will be impossible to compare the current number of jobs in New York City with 2025, leaving uncertainty in the official data about whether the city is actually gaining or losing employment.  

For example, March data released last week showed the city has lost 37,000 positions over the last 12 months. But if the March 2025 job number is not correct, neither is the 37,000 figure.

Another Complication

City officials, especially during the Adams administration, loved to focus on what they called private sector jobs, which means all jobs except government. The problem is that the majority of health care and social service jobs — like those of home health aides — are paid for by tax dollars, so they aren’t really private sector jobs. 

The city comptroller has begun tracking private sector jobs excluding health care and social services. Meanwhile, government jobs are generally good paying ones — they count too.

How’s the economy?

“The city’s labor market lost momentum in 2025,” Parrott writes, “The unemployment rate and poverty rate are higher than before the pandemic.” He adds that the impact of higher tariffs, rising prices because of the war with Iran and anticipated job losses due to artificial intelligence suggest the labor market will be marked by instability and structural transformation.

The state comptroller’s office is also worried.

“The analysis just confirms what has become a recurring story on jobs — government and Wall Street are critical contributors amid a slowing job growth picture in the city,” said Rahul Jain, the deputy comptroller for New York City. “We are becoming more, not less, reliant on these sectors for job growth and some of the traditional ladders for entering and moving up through the wage ladder.” 

Sectors like leisure,  hospitality and construction “are showing softness,” he added. 

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This is Borrow and Steal, a monthly interview series from our partners at Vital City profiling evidence-backed urban policy ideas from around the world and the practitioners who have translated them into reality. Sign up for their newsletter.

New York City has a permitting problem. Businesses and developers can wait months to obtain approval to open shop or start construction. To obtain a permit, applicants are often left to navigate a complex array of agencies, each with their own, fragmented software, and byzantine codes. The system is so complex that an entire profession exists — “the expeditor” — whose job is essentially to walk applications through City Hall. The system also produced scandals on a regular schedule: 50 inspectors, expeditors and owners arrested in a 2015 sting;11 Department of Buildings employees charged with taking more than $400,000 in bribes; a former DOB supervisor indicted just three weeks ago for allegedly fast-tracking plan reviews in exchange for $75,000 in cash and travel. And that’s before we get to the federal indictment of Mayor Eric Adams, which alleged that he pressured FDNY officials to permit the high-rise Turkish consulate to open before the building was deemed safe to occupy.  

Many American cities — from New York to San Francisco—have pledged to modernize urban permitting. They might look to an unexpected peer for inspiration: The Mexican City of Guadalajara, which has spent the last decade overhauling its permitting regime. Our interview today is with Yunive Moreno, director of Visor Urbano, an online, one-stop shop for issuing commercial permits, developed by Guadalajara in 2016 with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. It is now hosted by the state of Jalisco (population roughly 9 million), with some 60 cities across Mexico running a version of the platform. Applicants can pull up zoning maps, see what’s allowed on a given parcel and apply for a permit to open a business or begin construction — entirely online. The average turnaround for a permit is three days.

What began as a bureaucratic cleanup project produced an unexpected dividend: a clean digital paper trail that cut out local middlemen who had long extracted fees, formal and otherwise, from business owners navigating the permit process. An impact evaluation from researchers at Oxford and Columbia found an 84% reduction in licensing time, a 74% drop in reports of bribe solicitation by municipal officials, and an 85% drop in solicitation by third-party intermediaries. Some Jalisco municipalities have since seen permit revenue rise 100% to 300% in a single year.

In our interview, Yunive explains how Visor Urbano was built, how it was scaled from a single city to a state of 9 million, and what cities considering the model should know about the politics of digitization. She also offers some blunt advice for anyone considering the same path.

Cara Eckholm: Yunive, thanks for joining.

Yunive Moreno: Hi, Cara. Thanks for having me.

Cara Eckholm: Wonderful. So you were around in 2016 when Visor Urbano was just an idea. How did permitting work in Guadalajara before the platform, and what inspired the push to digitize the process?

Yunive Moreno: The process was, much like in the United States, quite complex. The principal challenge we faced at the time was the asymmetry of information around urban zoning — a lot of paperwork and a lack of transparency about what each permit actually required.

Also, in 2016, the city’s urban planning framework was updated for the first time in more than ten years. Those plans were published as documents full of highly technical language and data that were very difficult for ordinary people — anyone without a background in urban planning — to understand. That’s what motivated us to take those rules and translate them into an easy-to-use platform. With Visor Urbano, you select the property you’re interested in, and within seconds, you can see all the regulations that apply to that zone.

Once you’ve reviewed the applicable rules, you can start your application process entirely online — or, if you prefer, in person at the office. We maintained both channels. Staff at the Visor Urbano office help people digitize their paperwork and navigate the process. That’s how Visor Urbano got started, almost 10 years ago.

Cara Eckholm: It sounds like you’ve come a very long way. Just to make sure I’m understanding correctly — before Visor Urbano, if I were a business owner and wanted to check whether I could open a business at a particular site, I would have had to go in person?

Yunive Moreno: Yes, exactly. Before you could even begin the process of opening a business or starting construction, you had to visit a separate government office that held the urban planning information. That information existed as a kind of legal document — a PDF with hundreds of rules. Guadalajara is divided into, I believe, 10 or 12 zones, and the document ran more than 100 pages.

Cara Eckholm: Right, a zoning code.

Yunive Moreno: Exactly. It was really difficult to read and interpret. So you’d go to that office, and a public servant would analyze your situation manually — reviewing the law, sometimes visiting the site in person — and that process alone could take months, just to confirm whether your project was even permitted in that zone. 

There was a large asymmetry of information. Many consulting firms offered to do that analysis for you, but at a significant cost to citizens. What we did was take all of that zoning information and put it into a database. We mapped all the urban zoning rules by district and automated the lookup, which produced what we call “urban fact sheets” for each property, which citizens can download. Each fact sheet says what is allowed — and with that information you can then immediately begin your application online.

For larger projects, a public official still needs to review the application. But for something like a grocery store or other low-impact use, you can get your approval almost instantly.

Cara Eckholm: Where does the three-day average come in? What’s automatic and what requires a human reviewer?

Yunive Moreno: The fact sheets are instantaneous, but the permit application itself requires additional documentation — your ID, proof of property ownership, that kind of paperwork. The review of your uploads takes up to three days, during which a staff member verifies your identity and confirms that the property is legally yours. After that, you’re cleared to open your business.

Cara Eckholm: So just to recap: The zoning code is available online for anyone to consult. You look up a property, see whether your business is permitted there, and if you want to proceed, a human reviewer is looped in — but you’re still applying online and getting a response within about three days. And for more complex construction projects, I assume the review is more intensive. How do you differentiate between something like a grocery store — which gets fast approval — versus a multi-story commercial building?

Yunive Moreno: Yes, we have a hierarchy of project complexity. For all projects, there’s always a technical reviewer on the other side of the screen. For low-impact uses, that specialist works through a clear set of rules, so the process is relatively straightforward. For more complex projects, you should expect the review to take longer — but the key difference is that you can upload everything online: your project plans, architectural drawings, everything the reviewer needs. You no longer have to walk files into an office.

Cara Eckholm: Got it. And how did Visor Urbano go from idea to reality? I understand you initially received support from Bloomberg Philanthropies to build out the software, but that it remained a city-owned and city-operated project. Can you elaborate?

Yunive Moreno: Sure. In 2016, when Visor Urbano was just an idea, we applied for a Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayor’s Challenge in Latin America, and we were one of five winning cities to receive a grant from the foundation. That grant allowed us to build a dedicated technical team within Guadalajara city government, focused exclusively on the project. We believe that this platform opened up information that had for many years been siloed and gatekept. The response from the public was very strong.

Following Guadalajara’s success, we transitioned to working with the state of Jalisco, with the goal of replicating Visor Urbano across all 125 municipalities in the state. That was a real challenge — scaling something built for one of Mexico’s major cities to work for municipalities with vastly different resources and realities. Some of our municipalities have fewer than 100 residents. The needs are completely different.

We developed a new platform, Visor Urbano Jalisco, specifically for the state context. We visited municipalities across the state, ran surveys and listened carefully to understand what each community needed. Many other municipalities didn’t even have computers in their offices. They didn’t have specialized staff to handle permit applications.

So we studied those realities, built Visor Urbano Jalisco accordingly and launched in 2020. The pandemic actually helped us — because people couldn’t go to government offices, there was strong demand for online services. We ran a major communications campaign, and we’ve since launched in 35 municipalities. 

Cara Eckholm: I’m curious about how that replication effect actually works in practice. You mentioned that the mayor of Guadalajara later became governor of Jalisco — is that right? Was it his initiative to take the platform statewide?

Yunive Moreno: Yes, exactly. I think the political backing was the key driver of our success. The core values of Visor Urbano — transparency, efficiency and digitalization — were values that the team shared from the beginning. When Mayor Enrique Alfaro transitioned to the governorship of Jalisco, his innovation team moved with him, from the city to the state. The digital innovation agenda came with them, and the goal became bringing to all 125 municipalities the same tools that Guadalajara had. The idea was that it shouldn’t matter if your municipality doesn’t have the resources of a capital city — you should still be able to have your own modern, functional permitting platform.

So we built the software to be adaptable — each municipality can configure the platform to fit its own context. And the Visor Urbano Jalisco team does a lot of on-the-ground work: visiting municipalities, getting to know the staff, building capacity and supporting the transition to a new way of working. It’s a significant amount of people-oriented, soft-skills work alongside the technical implementation.

Cara Eckholm: That’s a great segue to my next question, which was about the political dynamics. Was there any pushback from permitting officers? Because as I understand it, in the old system, there were people making money at various stages of the process who were essentially cut out once everything went online. What was the reaction from those groups — the people working inside city governments, and the intermediaries who were helping shepherd applicants through the process, some legally and some not?

Yunive Moreno: We were actually surprised by how positive the reaction was. Part of that is because Visor Urbano’s initial focus was low-impact permits, which represent about 70% to 80% of all permit applications. But more importantly, we worked proactively with the business chambers — the chambers of commerce and construction industry associations — and tried to create a win-win situation. We showed them how the platform could actually help their work: It gave them better tools for managing higher-impact projects, and it helped their members get more transparent, rapid feedback from the government. 

I also think those groups benefited from the platform in a more indirect way: As the process became more efficient, more people chose to go through official channels rather than informal ones. We saw that when the platform works well, it builds trust — people become more willing to engage with government processes and do things by the book.

Cara Eckholm: I’m curious about the platform architecture. Why did you decide to make it open source? Was it always obvious there would be demand from other cities?

Yunive Moreno: From the very beginning — both with Guadalajara and later with Jalisco — we understood that this was a problem facing many cities. We received calls, attended conferences and heard from cities all over Mexico that wanted their own version of Visor Urbano. As a fun fact: In Mexico today, saying “I have my own Visor Urbano” has become shorthand for having an online zoning and permitting platform — even when those systems weren’t built with our code or our support. 

Making the code open source was also a commitment we made to Bloomberg Philanthropies from the start. It was part of the foundation’s vision — and one of the final deliverables of our collaboration — to open up Visor Urbano Jalisco in the most accessible and practical way possible. We published the code in late 2024.

Since then, a number of cities have been building on it. We’re always open to helping. And I know that Bloomberg Philanthropies is also running its Cities Ideas Exchange program with Visor Urbano as one of its featured projects, with the goal of replicating it in cities around the world.

Cara Eckholm: How many cities are using Visor Urbano today?

Yunive Moreno: Approximately 60 cities in Mexico.

Cara Eckholm: And has it spread beyond Mexico yet?

Yunive Moreno: Not yet. Through the Bloomberg Cities Ideas Exchange, there are plans to launch in one city in Argentina and one city in Chile, but as of now, there are no implementations outside Mexico as far as I know.

Cara Eckholm: Still, 60 is impressive. And how does the platform work for municipalities that don’t have reliable internet access, or even computers? You mentioned some towns are starting without basic infrastructure.

Yunive Moreno: Yes. As part of the support we provided to municipalities — with philanthropic backing — we were able to supply desktop computers for Visor Urbano in some cases. We’re also continuing to work with the state of Jalisco to expand that support.

But the hardware is often the easier part. The harder, more ongoing work is capacity building — training public servants to use the platform consistently, making sure citizens know how to navigate it and sustaining both sides of that equation over time. We have two sets of users: citizens applying for permits, and the government staff processing them. Serving both well is a continuous effort. It’s a hard process, but a deeply fulfilling one when you see how many people it reaches.

Cara Eckholm: In terms of volume — how many users or downloads have you seen across Jalisco?

Yunive Moreno: Right now, Visor Urbano Jalisco has urban plans available for 10 municipalities. Not every municipality has an updated and digitized urban plan — that’s a separate process — but for the ones we do have, we’ve generated 440,000 urban fact sheet downloads since the platform launched in 2020. That number reflects a lot of interest in doing business and building in the state.

In addition, 35,000 permits have been processed through the platform across the state. We’re really proud of those numbers — it’s the most-used online platform in the state government.

Cara Eckholm: I want to ask about the platform’s impact. I know researchers from Oxford and Columbia came to study Visor Urbano in Guadalajara around 2020. What did they find?

Yunive Moreno: Yes. They came toward the end of the Guadalajara phase and conducted surveys and calls with platform users. They found an 84% reduction in average time for the licensing process, a 74% reduction in reports of bribe solicitation by municipal officials and an 85% reduction in bribe solicitation by third-party intermediaries — what we call “coyotes,” the people who used to help applicants navigate the process.

That impact evaluation was enormously meaningful to us, because fighting corruption in urban development was always one of Visor Urbano’s goals. It’s a sensitive topic — not many cities are willing to openly acknowledge or study corruption in their permitting systems. So having rigorous external evidence was really powerful.

Cara Eckholm: Right, I know Jalisco has been in the news a lot recently related to gang activity. I will say though that corruption-in-permitting is a universal problem. It’s not specific to Jalisco or Mexico. In U.S. cities, we’ve essentially legalized the intermediary role by creating the “expeditor” profession, but every few years there’s a major scandal. In fact, one of the original corruption charges against the last mayor of New York involved pressuring someone to approve a building permit before an inspection had been completed. 

It sounds like you’ve made progress relative to where most places are. On that note — the last time we spoke, you mentioned that you also saw a corresponding increase in municipal permitting revenue. The idea being that money that once went to bribes is now being collected by the city. Is that right? And how significant have those revenue increases been?

Yunive Moreno: What we observed in Jalisco is a bit more nuanced than a direct bribe-to-revenue conversion.

In many smaller municipalities, the issue wasn’t exactly bribery in the traditional sense. It was more that there wasn’t really a formal permitting process to speak of. People knew each other, deals were made informally and businesses opened without permits — not necessarily because anyone demanded a bribe, but because that was simply how things worked. A lot of economic activity was happening outside the formal system.

So the revenue increase we’ve seen is largely, we believe, due to people entering the formal economy. When you make the formal process easy, accessible and trustworthy, people who previously operated informally start going through official channels. That’s one major factor. 

It’s worth understanding just how significant permits and licenses are as a revenue source for Mexican municipalities. Their principal income streams come from three things: land use and property tax; water usage charges and permit and license fees. That’s essentially the full menu of owned revenue for a local government. So when permit revenue increases substantially, it matters.

And the state benefits too — as municipalities collect more revenue, the state’s federal transfer allocations also increase. We’re currently working to formally institutionalize Visor Urbano Jalisco as a state public policy — moving it from an innovation project to a permanent part of the government structure. It’s a complex process, given the need to respect municipal autonomy, but the case is strong: we have municipalities that have seen revenue increases of 100% to 300% in a single year.

Cara Eckholm: It sounds like the program pays for itself? I hadn’t thought about the informal-to-formal economy angle, but it makes complete sense.

Just to close out — what are the key takeaways for other cities considering digitizing their permitting processes? Any advice?

Yunive Moreno: My advice is simply: start. You don’t need to wait for the perfect moment or have all the resources in place. What you need is the will and the right team. You will encounter resistance and hear a lot of “no’s” along the way — but once you push through that, the benefits become visible and the momentum builds.

I also believe citizens are demanding more information, clearer rules and more power in their own hands. And the lesson from our experience is that when the government delivers better services, people respond. 

Cara Eckholm: Of course. Well, thank you so much for your time, Yunive. It’s a great story, and I’m sure it’ll be a source of inspiration for a lot of people.

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New York’s first-ever deputy mayor for economic justice says her job is to grow the economy by delivering on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s agenda for helping those who need it the most.

In: Affordable housing, free childcare and city-owned grocery stores. 

Out: Billions in tax breaks and incentives to big developers and employers, unless they improve the lives of working class New Yorkers.

In a sharp U-turn from policies pursued by mayors for decades, Deputy Mayor Julie Su says priorities that include building 200,000 new apartments and establishing universal child care will create a healthy economy. 

Gone, she says, are the days when city taxpayers helped fund new office developments that sometimes showed little public benefit. 

“Building housing at the scale that we’re talking about is a job creator and an economic engine,” Su said in a wide ranging interview with THE CITY. “Childcare is both an economic generator because when you grow that industry, there’s jobs in that industry and you allow other people to join the workplace.”

The turnabout is clear from the Mamdani administration’s new approach to tax breaks, favoring them only after tougher scrutiny and with provisions for union labor. Su said taxpayer-funded incentives would require “benefits for working class communities,” though she wasn’t more specific on what that might mean.

Mamdani’s agenda is hemmed in by a $5.4 billion budget deficit and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s refusal to go along with his demands for higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and inflation in New York City outpaces the national rate.

Speaking at City Hall, Su — a former top official in President Joe Biden’s Labor Department — emphasized the need for equity in economic growth. 

“This is a little bit of a crude metaphor, but I think about it as we want everybody to have a real slice of the pie,” she said. “We also want to grow the overall pie, and we want to make sure that the pie is filled with good ingredients that make people healthy and happy.”

That includes possibly implementing the mayor’s campaign pledge to nearly double the minimum wage from its current $17 an hour to $30 over the next several years.

Not on the agenda so far are the kind of direct city investments in industries and neighborhoods that have spurred growth in the past.

In the early 2000s, the Bloomberg administration financed the expansion of the 7 subway to the far west side, provided tax breaks to jumpstart the office and luxury residential district at Hudson Yards, and overhauled the management of the Brooklyn Navy Yard to create a home for light manufacturing. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio offered $5 billion in tax breaks in a failed effort to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to the city and pursued growth outside Manhattan with investments and tax incentives. 

Eric Adams pursued projects like turning the Brooklyn Army Terminal into a center for climate innovation companies, provided millions of dollars to help expand the city’s film studios and relentlessly worked to lure tech companies and universities.

“We believe that all tools should be on the table to attract and retain high-quality, family-supporting jobs in New York City,” Su said. “In the past, tax incentives have enriched those at the top of the economic ladder while depriving the city of critical revenue and often failing to yield tangible benefits for working New Yorkers.”

Of a planned Hudson Yards expansion that relied on another $2 billion in public money, a Mamdani spokesperson said: “We are not actively engaged in negotiations to move this project forward at this time.”

A key indication of Mamdani’s economic policy may be who is named to run the Economic Development Corp., a semi-independent agency that has historically been the spearhead for development efforts. 

Shortly after being appointed, Su wrote a memo that called for the agency to focus on “the quality (not just number) of jobs created for the people who call N.Y.C. home,” The New York Times reported, raising alarm among business leaders. Su declined to say where she stood on filling the job but added that EDC is “firing on all cylinders.”

Business leaders are closely watching who will be appointed.

“Folks are still waiting to see who the administration’s point person on business recruitment and job retention will be,” said James Whelan, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York who worked on economic development in the Bloomberg administration. “If you want a progressive city, you need a prosperous city. Someone needs to pay for the progressivity.”

Ruffled Hedge Fund Feathers

Su, who served as California’s labor secretary before joining the Biden administration, moved to address a growing storm over the mayor’s calling out of billionaire hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin by filming a social media post touting the pied-a-terre tax proposal in front of Griffin’s $238 million Manhattan penthouse.

Griffin’s fund, Citadel, moved hundreds of people to New York from Chicago and is in the process of building a new headquarters on Park Avenue — but a letter to employees last Thursday said it might not move ahead with the plan.

“We are about to commence the redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, creating 6,000 highly paid construction jobs and supporting the creation of more than 15,000 permanent jobs in mid-town New York,” wrote chief operating officer Gerald Beeson. “The project — if we move forward — will entail more than $6 billion dollars of spending.”

Gov. Hochul announced Tuesday she would meet with Griffin amid continuing media focus on the issue. Su tried to calm the waters in her interview with THE CITY.

“We value Wall Street. We value companies that have made New York City their home,” she said. “We value the job creators who are really fundamental to creating the kind of growth that is required for shared prosperity. And we absolutely welcome the opportunities to work with them to deliver on an economy that works for everybody.”

Su declined to say whether the Administration would support a bill in the City Council to raise the minimum wage, noting uncertainty over whether the city had the power to do that without approval from state legislators.

But she strongly supported the efforts to end what the administration sees as corporate gouging of consumers — especially online. Mamdani has required companies offering online subscriptions provide an easy unsubscribe option, and moved to force hotels to disclose fees more clearly.

Some of Mamdani’s appointees worked for Lina Khan, Biden’s Federal Trade Commission chair, who pursued aggressive regulation of tech companies. Khan has emerged as an important adviser to the mayor, and with the Trump Administration undoing much of their work in Washington, they are attempting to reestablish regulations on the city level.

“If you as a company operate in New York City and your practices, including subscription traps, impact New Yorkers, then we are charged with protecting New York workers and consumers,” Su said. “And we are going to exercise our full authority on that front.”

The mayor has taken two steps to aid small businesses in the city. In January he ordered all city agencies to review regulations affecting small firms that could be reduced or eliminated. He also appointed small business development executive Delia Awusi as his “Mom-and-Pop Czar” to help the smallest of those companies.

Mamdani is far from the first mayor to promise changes.

“I’ve been around for four mayors and all of them promised to reduce fines and fees and didn’t,” said a skeptical Laura Rothrock, president of the Long Island City Partnership.

Su says that the agencies have submitted their list of regulations that could be revised and it is under review. She said she understands the failures that have preceded her but added that this administration will be different — and not just by helping small businesses.

“I have been getting advice that we should tinker at the margins rather than set broad goals that people are going to point at, that you failed at,” she said. “That is not who we are. That is not who this mayor is. We have to prove that government can deliver.”

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Every fall, the Wall Street analysts who cover the real estate giant CBRE troop to the company’s local headquarters in the Met Life Building on Park Avenue to hear executives tell them about the state of business and why they should recommend the company’s stock to their clients.

Months ago, before the mayoral election, New York region CEO Mary Ann Tighe had given her presentation and answered the analysts’ questions when, throwing a curveball, she looked at the group and said, “Now I have a question for you.”

“How many of you live in the city?” she asked. About three quarters of the 29 analysts, who looked to be 35 or younger, raised their hands. “And how many of you intend to vote for Mamdani?” she continued. 

Most of the hands stayed up.

Tighe retells that story to make a point. CEOs may have spent millions trying to block the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and now are mobilizing to prevent tax increases on executives like themselves and their companies — but the people who work for them are on the mayor’s side. 

The dichotomy will be important as the city’s leading business group, the Partnership for New York City, crafts an aggressive new approach to Mamdani after its outgoing leader drew criticism during the mayoral campaign over her praise for the young democratic socialist.

But before they attempt to convince voters that the mayor’s progressive policies may harm New York, the partnership’s leaders may have to persuade their own employees.

An analysis by THE CITY found that Mamdani’s mayoral campaign received contributions of more than $242,000 from 1,971 employees of the 300 companies belonging to the partnership.

“You can’t just tell workers to do something and expect them to do it because it’s good for you,” said Bradley Tusk, a key political aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and one of the loudest voices calling on the partnership to be more assertive in the city’s rough-and-tumble politics. “If you can’t persuasively explain why it tangibly and directly matters to them, it won’t work.”

Mamdani’s Big Tech Base

The young talent that CEOs say are the reason they keep their companies in New York represent Mamdani’s base. A recent Marist poll showed that the mayor’s strongest approval ratings came from college graduates between the ages of 18 and 29.

Employees at tech companies led the list of contributors, even as Mamdani targets Big Tech for practices like making it difficult to cancel subscriptions.

Google employees – 323 of them, mostly software engineers and researchers – gave more money to Mamdani during his campaign than those from any other partnership company, followed by employees at Amazon and Meta. Google employees donated $55,726.61.

Roughly 40% of the partnership member employees who donated to Mamdani lived in Brooklyn, while nearly 23% reported Manhattan addresses, while others live outside of the city.

The average donation among employees in partnership members was $93, a little lower than the campaign’s final average contribution of $99, with the majority of them small-dollar donations, according to city Campaign Finance Board data.

Until recently, tech company executives skewed to the left, said Julie Samuels, CEO of the local tech trade group Tech: NYC.

“They are young, they live in Brooklyn and what’s interesting is not that they support Mamdani but that for the first time there is a split between tech workers and their bosses,” she said.

She also notes that tech executives have been mostly silent on the topic of the mayor — even as other CEOs work to block Mamdani’s efforts for higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

‘Adverse Reaction’ 

Steven Fulop, the former Jersey City mayor who became CEO of the partnership in January, says the anecdotes and campaign contributions do not necessarily reflect the views of the 800,000 people who work for member companies.

“People had an adverse reaction to the choices that were presented to the electorate in November, and he was best for those people,” Fulop said of Mamdani. “But that doesn’t speak to that segment embracing socialism.”

He says his task at the partnership isn’t to be for or against the mayor but to develop common sense policies to make New York a better place. He suggests it is too early for judgments.

“One hundred days into his term, people thought Eric Adams would be elected president,” Fulop said.

Tighe sees a benefit to the support for Mamdani within New York companies.

“What you have to remember is that, for young people, having a 34-year-old mayor is cool and having him as mayor makes that talent want to live here more,” she said.

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As she surveyed the packed aisles of her local supermarket on 116th Street in East Harlem, Chelssy T. cast a longing eye towards a vacant lot under the Metro-North tracks that’s the first announced site for one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city-owned grocery stores.

“Prices have gone up so much,” said Chelssy, 35, a lifelong Harlemite who asked to keep her last name private. “The other day I bought kimchi, a bag of onions and three plums, and that was like $30. I think it’s a great idea.” 

Mamdani says the municipal grocery stores are needed to bring fresh, affordable fare to so-called “food deserts” across the city, while even supporters say he has many challenges to deliver on that promise.

The mayor’s proposal, part of the popular affordability agenda that propelled him into office, calls for one city-owned grocery in each borough. He says costs will be lower since the stores won’t pay rent or property taxes. The city will hire a private company to handle operations and require basic items to be priced below the citywide average.

Unfortunately for Chelssy, she will have to wait until 2029 for potentially lower prices at the new Harlem store. Mamdani’s $30 million Manhattan grocery, slated to be built on the grounds of the 92-year-old La Marqueta public market, is the first to be announced but will be the last to open. City-owned groceries in The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island will open in existing structures, officials said.

The delay for the Manhattan outlet is only one of a series of challenges the Mamdani administration will have to meet if its grocery plan is to work, experts — including strong advocates for the plan — told THE CITY.

As they compete against local and national chains, will five city-owned groceries have the leverage needed with suppliers to buy and sell at low prices? To what extent will taxpayers subsidize the stores? 

And, can city government deliver the kind of store where people actually want to shop?

“This has to deliver on universal appeal. It can’t be a poor people program,” said Fransico Yu, who has studied city-owned grocery stores for Community Food Advocates, a policy advocate group. “This can help people who are solidly in the middle class but are feeling the impact of food prices.”

The Big Box Battering Ram 

Mamdani, announcing the Manhattan grocery last week, said the private sector had fallen short, forcing the city to step in. 

“When corporations control every part of the food supply chain, prices go up, basic necessities become luxuries and workers and customers both lose,” Mamdani said in East Harlem last week. “A public option allows us to intervene where the market has failed.”

The administration pointed to a study by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli showing that food prices in the New York metropolitan area grew 56% between 2013 and 2023 while they rose only 46% nationally. The report did not give reasons for the difference.

But Errol Schweizer, a longtime food executive whose resume includes serving in a top position at Whole Foods, says the reasons for the disparity are obvious. 

The city mostly lacks big-box giants like Walmart, whose enormous buying clout allows them to extract exceptionally low prices from suppliers and force down overall prices. New York has many more independent stores; their buying cooperatives don’t have the ability to win the lowest prices from suppliers.

Grocery stores in the five boroughs also are more unionized than elsewhere, which leads to higher labor costs at both union and non-union stores, Schweizer said. Mamdani has said the city-owned groceries will be unionized.

But Schweizer also disputes the idea that the Mamdani plan is radical or an attack on private enterprise. 

The Defense Department has operated commissary stores in military bases since 1967, he notes. The Pentagon spends $2 billion a year subsidizing the 235 stores, which have the scale to demand low prices from suppliers and save military families billions of dollars a year.

“Consider city-owned grocery stores as libraries,” Schweizer said. “They compete with bookstores, but we still consider them an important public service.”

The Competition Question

A few other cities are trying municipal grocery stores, but those are being placed in areas with no private competitors. 

Atlanta’s Azalea Fresh Market opened last summer with an $18 million public investment after city officials spent years trying to lure a chain store to the area. A publicly owned grocery store under construction in Madison, Wis., will be in a neighborhood where the nearest competitor is more than a mile away.

Kansas City last year closed its publicly funded store. After pumping in $18 million over 10 years, it was unable to lure enough customers to remain viable.

While Mamdani’s initiative is meant in part to serve neighborhoods that don’t have ready supermarket access, THE CITY found four grocery stores — and numerous fruit stands and bodegas — within a half mile of the site of his future Manhattan grocery, on Park Avenue between East 117th and 118th streets.

The farthest flung of those four supermarkets were a half-mile, or an 11-minute walk, away.

They offered staples at a wide range of prices. A can of Goya black beans cost $1.50 at a Fine Fare supermarket on Malcolm X Boulevard, while a City Fresh on Third Avenue and East 121st Street was asking $2.19. 

While the price of a gallon of milk held steady at $4.99 across all four stores, a pound of ground beef ranged from $5.99 to $9.99, and the cost of a gallon of Florida’s Natural orange juice stretched from $6.99 to a shocking $13.99.

There is no citywide tracker of basic grocery prices; the Mamdani administration is considering whether it needs to create one, spokesperson Cassio Mendoza said.

Discount Clout

The biggest challenge facing Mamdani’s grocery plan is whether the city-owned stores can operate efficiently and secure grocery staples at a cost that will allow the mayor to deliver on his promise of below-market prices.

When it comes to discounts, the market says: Go big or go home. The city may not have the clout to demand lower prices from suppliers. Schweizer estimates that the city would need about 25 stores to command substantial discounts — a far cry from what’s planned. 

Schweizer says that, like the Defense Department, the administration will have to subsidize costs.

Yu wondered what kind of private operator will be willing to run the store. The city will have to impose rules requiring substantial reporting to ensure the operator is following guidelines and providing quality fare. The policy advocate is among those who want the stores to tap into local farmers, although it isn’t clear if that is the most cost effective approach.

“Who is going to step up to deliver this kind of program?” he said.

The Mamdani administration says it is working out how to ensure that core staples are affordable. It says the operators will be attracted by a stable revenue source. This summer it expects to release the requirements for private operators.

“We expect any private operator to both maintain high labor standards and meet our affordability targets for a core staple of essentials,” spokesperson Mendoza said.

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The union representing more than 34,000 luxury residential building doormen and porters said it reached a tentative agreement with a prominent landlord group, averting a strike ahead of a Monday deadline. 

The union, 32BJ SEIU, and the Realty Advisory Board, the consortium representing landlords at some of the city’s toniest condos and co-ops, had been locked all week in marathon negotiations in a hotel ballroom at the Midtown Hilton Hotel.

The four-year agreement preserves workers’ health benefits without premium-sharing — a main sticking point in the negotiations. Workers also won wage increases totaling an additional $4.50 per hour by the end of the contract in 2030, plus a 15% pension boost. The agreement is pending a mail ballot vote by union members.

“Today we found a common path forward with the RAB that rewards workers appropriately,” 32BJ SEIU president Manny Pastreich said in a statement Friday. “This agreement honors the indispensable contributions 32BJ members make to our city.”

The average annual salary will rise to $71,000 by the end of the contract, the RAB said in a statement.

The union and the RAB announced the deal at the Midtown Hilton.

“This agreement is a win, win, win, win,” for the employers, the union, the employees and building residents, said Howard Rothschild, president of the RAB.

Workers said management was seeking to force workers to begin paying towards their healthcare coverage, which is currently paid for entirely by employers. But the Realty Advisory Board said that it was obligated to cut back on expenses given rising costs and Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to freeze rent increases on stabilized apartments.

Earlier Friday, as negotiations were ongoing, workers gathered in a practice picket outside The Caldwell, an apartment building on York Avenue on the Upper East Side. 

Leon Sonson, a porter at The Caldwell, told reporters he was most preoccupied about preserving his premium-free healthcare. 

“I don’t want to mess up my healthcare,” said the father of four and grandfather. “I just want what’s fair, I believe in being fair and equal.”

The union nearly went on strike over the same issue in 2022, but reached a deal the day before the scheduled walk out. Residential building workers last went on strike in 1991, in a stoppage that lasted 12 days.

More than 10,000 workers rallied on Park Avenue on Wednesday ahead of the strike authorization vote, joined by Mamdani and others. 

Building managers began strike preparations earlier this month, requesting volunteers to take out the trash and warning residents of potential disruptions to delivery services and more. More than 550,000 people live in the buildings that were poised to strike, spanning from rentals to luxury Billionaire’s Row megatowers and iconic co-cops like The Dakota.

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