Days after Mayor Eric Adams took office, his hand-picked correction commissioner ousted the official overseeing thousands of backlogged use-of-force investigations inside the city jail system — a move cheered by correction officer unions that long viewed her as overly aggressive.

More than four years later, that same investigator, Sarena Townsend, is returning to the Department of Correction with the backing of the federal court’s remediation manager who has tapped her to help overhaul the agency’s maligned disciplinary system, THE CITY has learned.

Under a new organizational structure laid out in a recent court filing, remediation manager Nicholas Deml will have final authority over the unit, which inherits what officials have described as the nation’s largest jail use-of-force investigative caseload. 

The unit will probe allegations of officer and supervisor misconduct and make decisions on how they should be potentially disciplined. DOC Commissioner Stanley Richards and Deml will share final authority.

The hiring signals Deml intends to take an aggressive approach toward labor groups as he seeks to force long-stalled reforms at the city jails.

Liz Glazer, who ran the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice during the de Blasio administration, hailed the appointment.  

“She’s aces,” said Glazer, who now operates Vital City, a nonprofit website and magazine focused on civic well-being. 

Townsend “knows the jails inside and out” and “has the drive and judgment to fix what’s broken,” she added. 

Since leaving city government, Townsend has built a private law practice representing, among others, correction officers and supervisors suing the department or facing internal charges for alleged misconduct.

It is unclear how those pending cases will proceed. 

“I regrettably can’t comment,” Townsend told THE CITY. 

Representatives for the city’s DOC did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Her salary and benefit package also remains a mystery. Federal Judge Laura Swain, who oversees the remediation manager, has refused to disclose how much Deml and his team will be compensated. 

For years, the federal monitor overseeing the jails has warned that investigators routinely downplayed or mishandled staff misconduct cases, even when incidents were captured on body-worn cameras.

In one December incident detailed in a recent monitoring report, an officer could be heard yelling “Don’t leave marks” as staff tackled a restrained detainee. Another officer appeared to kick the detainee while he lay on the floor, according to the report. Despite the footage, the incident was classified as a low-level use of force and resulted in no documented injuries.

In another case, a correction officer sprayed a chemical agent onto his own boot inside a sanitation closet before placing the contaminated footwear near the face of a fully restrained detainee, the report said. Other staff nearby appeared to joke about the incident and pretended no spray had been deployed.

Steve Martin, the court-appointed monitor, said the episodes exposed “the toxicity that lies at the center of the culture that must be reformed” and reflected behavior “fundamentally incompatible with staff’s constitutional and ethical obligations.”

Martin has for years been highly critical of how jail officials decide who to discipline and how they carry out those punishments.

Townsend has an active social media presence. She regularly posts updates on the Luigi Mangione case and publicly touts her legal victories on TikTok and other platforms. 

Correction Captains Association President Paul Idlett said the union is prepared to work with Townsend if she approaches disciplinary cases fairly.

“The CCA is willing to work with anybody that’s going to treat our members fairly, listen to all the facts and mitigating circumstances, and not be a headhunter,” Idlett told THE CITY.

But he said he was concerned about Townsend’s past social media activity criticizing the department, especially during the Adams years.

“I don’t want the negative aspect that she promotes on social media about the department carrying over into this role,” he said. “I’m willing to sit down with her to see what the direction is. But if she’s coming in with the energy that the department did her wrong, it’s not going to be good.”

Last month, she was a guest on Harsh Truths, a podcast hosted by Norman Seabrook, the former longtime head of the correction officers’ union who was sentenced to close to five years in prison in part for taking a $60,000 kickback stuffed inside a Salvatore Ferragamo bag. 

“She’s a fantastic attorney,” he told his listeners at the start of the episode. “What’s important about her is she’s been on both sides of it.”

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On a recent spring day, Prospect Lefferts Gardens shook with such force that some neighbors believed there was an earthquake, they said. The bricks of a co-op building in the Brooklyn neighborhood broke off and crashed into the courtyard, and new cracks wormed their way into some residents’ homes. 

“It’s as if a train were running through the house,” said Dean Foster, 75, who lives on Rutland Road and Bedford Avenue. 

It was not an earthquake but vibrations from a pile driver digging steel beams into the soil at 1935 Bedford Ave. without proper safety monitors in place to protect the surrounding homes, according to city records and a Department of Buildings spokesperson.

Pile driving involves using a heavy-duty machine to force beams into the earth to create a stable foundation for a future structure, causing intense vibrations to travel from the source of the driving. 

“If we opened the cabinet door in the kitchen, the glassware would have fallen out,” Foster said in his home, located two blocks from the construction site.

Nestled between historic houses and two 90-year-old co-op buildings, the lot has become the site of a bitter battle between its newest owners and neighbors, whose homes have been damaged and lives disrupted during heavy construction, according to photos and videos reviewed by THE CITY.

Bobby McCullough, 42, began contacting 311 with complaints of cracks in their apartment building when construction ramped up in the first week of May, service requests show. 

“That was the first time I was fearful for my immediate safety,” McCullough said. “The building was shaking at a level that I was concerned about something falling, not off the shelf, but like a part of the ceiling.” 

Suzanne Cooke, who has lived in the co-op building for 13 years, said her daughter works late nights and has been disturbed by the construction while she sleeps during the day. 

“It’s startled her and woke her out of her sleep,” Cooke said. “There’s items in our space that fell off shelves.” 

McCullough said they were standing in the courtyard of the co-op as bricks from the adjacent building broke off and crashed to the ground. They were on the phone with a city building employee when it happened, who instructed them to call 911 immediately. 

Firefighters responded to the scene for bricks falling from the co-op building, according to a fire department spokesperson. Firefighters told the contractors to stop pile driving, but they did not listen, McCullough and other residents said.

“Ten minutes after they left, work continued,” McCullough told THE CITY. 

History of Violations

The entity Bedford 1935 Daf LLC, owned by Yonit Tzadok, purchased the lot on Feb. 28, 2025, according to property records, becoming the site’s third owner in nine years. A partner to the owner, Izchak Naftalin, filed permits to build a 10-story building on the lot in July 2025, according to records and media reports. Neither Tzadok nor Naftalin responded to inquiries from THE CITY. 

The current owners have paid $16,000 to the city in fines since January for various infractions, including failure to maintain a safe job site, failing to obtain proper permits and violating a stop work order, according to building department records. 

On May 5 the city issued Lead It Builders LLC, another contractor on site, a violation with a $5,000 fine for pile driving without safety monitoring devices, which is pending. 

Past development attempts on the lot have failed in recent years, and it has a history of unauthorized demolition work from a prior developer, as previously reported by THE CITY. In 2021, the Department of Environmental Protection issued $68,000 in fines for multiple violations of asbestos-removal safety rules.

In the last two years through early January, another owner of the lot, — 1935 Bedford Ave LLC, which sold the lot to the current LLC owner — ran up $27,321 in fines for a variety of code violations, including unsafe job site and inadequate site fencing. As of this week, they’d paid off $19,196 with $8,125 unresolved, records show. 

Residents told THE CITY they have struggled to keep up with whether stop work orders are in effect, as they go back and forth with lodging complaints against the contractors, who eventually get the stop work orders rescinded, or violate the orders and write a check to the city for the fines.

“The stop work orders come and go very quick,” McCullough said. 

Between February and May 2026, the city issued and rescinded two stop work orders for driving piles without monitoring protocols in place. Another stop work order issued on April 30 with no explanation was rescinded the next day. 

On Wednesday the city ordered all work to stop again, after an inspector responding to yet another complaint and found no designated superintendent while construction was ongoing, which creates a “hazard,” according to the order.

Gary Vinbaytel, who is named as an associate of the project’s owner according to city records, denied the city’s and neighbor’s claims that he is pile driving without the proper monitors.

“They fabricate everything,” he said in an email to THE CITY, referring to the lot’s neighbors. “All our construction is in accordance with all DOB regulations, monitoring and regiments. We follow each step very carefully and have sophisticated monitoring in place.”

He added, “These neighbors have prevented any construction from proceeding for a decade with multiple prior owners.”

Shaking and Cracking

Residents began complaining to the building agency of their homes shaking and cracking in February 2026. 

Anya Glowa-Kollisch, 42, board president of the Hawthorne Street co-op adjacent to the lot, said they have tried for nearly a year to get the project owners to sign an agreement for providing proper safety equipment, calling the work “exhausting.” 

“We have no idea how much damage has already been done to our building,” Glowa-Kollisch said. “It’s not that we don’t want development. This isn’t a NIMBY situation. We understand that things change and that there’s a need for housing.”

“What we want is for it to be done safely,” they added.

An engineering report Vinbaytel had prepared and submitted to the city as a requirement for the project recommended contractors micropile — drilling small-diameter columns into the ground that creates low vibrations but typically takes longer to install — instead of pile driving, stating it could cause vibrations that would affect adjacent buildings.

Cal Hadley’s family has owned his home on Fenimore Street since 1974. The house, built in 1935, is about 20 feet away from the construction. 

He said the pile driving “would work if we were on a deserted island someplace, and no other building was around for miles.” 

“But this is Brooklyn,” Hadley said. “Everything is in such close proximity to each other.” 

“No one’s saying that, ‘Well, we don’t want any buildings,’ but when you do this — and that’s what we’re focused on — why are you causing damage to other homes?”

‘Incredibly Stressful’

The residents THE CITY spoke to described their neighborhood as tight-knit and multicultural with historic homes. Now known as Little Caribbean, the area has been rapidly gentrifying, desired for its good transit options, historically designated homes and proximity to Prospect Park. 

Nicole DeCicco, 42, has used the nearby park as a refuge from her shaking building. 

“I typically partially work from home, and I haven’t been able to sit here and do work,” she said. “We’re getting woken up. They’re doing drilling at like 7 o’clock in the morning.” 

McCullough has lived in the co-op beside the lot for a little over a decade, which they said they cherish for its “building elders,” who have lived there for over 40 years. 

“It’s incredibly stressful to feel like the well-being of the building as a structure hinges on our awareness as just ordinary residents,” McCullough said. 

They are unsure what they will do about the cracks in their walls. 

“I can’t even get there,” they said. “I’m simply, I am trying to stop more from happening.”

Additional reporting by Greg B. Smith.

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The Buildings Department slapped new violations on the owners of the building where three tenants died in a fire last week after inspectors found padlocks on doors leading to rooms with fire escape exits, records show.

Inspectors also alleged that a rear courtyard where the fire escape leads to was obstructed by debris, blocking access to the street.

“This poses a safety risk to tenants,” according to a violation served on owners Jack Bick and SB Dyckman LLC on May 7, three days after a fire allegedly caused by a dropped cigarette ripped through the six-story tenement at 207 Dyckman St., killing three tenants and leaving five others in critical condition.

Inspectors also discovered the basement of the aging tenement had been illegally subdivided into what they described as four single-room occupancy flats.

The danger of a blocked fire escape was made clear by the May 4 fire, which prosecutors say started with a flicked cigarette in the lobby that soon ignited and raced up the stairwell to the bulkhead leading to the roof. 

Escape by the stairwell was impossible, forcing tenants to instead seek a way out via the fire escape. Three tenants, including a fashion journalist for People magazine and her mother, perished in the blaze. Five other tenants were critically injured.

The Buildings Department served the owners with three violations, including one that alleged they “observed throughout different apartments second means of egress was obstructed.” That included discovering padlocks “on the doors leading to some of the rooms leading to the fire escape in apartments #21 and #33.”

An attorney for Bick did not return THE CITY’s call Wednesday.

Homicide Charges

On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Victor Arias, 29, a tenant in the building, with criminally negligent homicide. Prosecutors allege Arias returned home shortly after midnight on May 4th and sat down on a window sill in the lobby to smoke a cigarette. Law enforcement officials say he tossed his cigarette into a cardboard box and went upstairs to his apartment to go to bed.

The boxes soon ignited and the fire then jumped to the stairway. When firefighters arrived they found several tenants scrambling on to the fire escape fleeing the blaze.

THE CITY reported Sunday that the city Department of Housing Preservation & Development has sued the landlords of the Dyckman Street building 16 times over serious violations at 10 buildings they own across the city. The owners have also racked up more than 1,300 housing code violations, including citations for non-functioning self-closing doors.
Fire Department officials said apartments in the Dyckman Street building where the entry doors were closed suffered little damage. Eight units where the doors were left open were gutted.

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With the Long Island Rail Road on the brink of its first strike in more than 30 years, Gov. Kathy Hochul warned Wednesday that the MTA and riders on the country’s largest commuter railroad “have to be ready for whatever happens.”

Leaders from the MTA and a coalition of five LIRR unions resumed labor negotiations Wednesday in advance of the 12:01 a.m. Saturday strike deadline that could leave close to 300,000 riders from Long Island, Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan working from home or in search of alternative commutes.

Those could include driving, carpooling or taking shuttle buses between six LIRR stations and a pair of subway stops in eastern Queens: Jamaica-179 Street on the F line and Howard Beach JFK Airport on the A.

“It’s probably going to take me two and a half hours to get to work, so I’m dreading it,” Rossella Mitolo, a legal assistant who commutes between Midwood, Brooklyn and Mineola, said Wednesday morning while waiting for an eastbound LIRR train at Jamaica. “I’m praying that it does not occur — please, please, please, I’ve been so stressed all week.”

At the core of the labor standoff is the unions’ push for 5% worker pay raises to counter inflation and the increased cost of living, with Hochul saying she is committed to keeping the trains running and sparing riders from “unnecessary fare hikes or higher taxes.”

“Yes, workers deserve to be paid fairly for their work, but at the same time, we must be responsible with public funds and the fares paid by Long Island residents,” Hochul said Wednesday at an unrelated event at Jones Beach. “I believe that a deal can be reached here and I’ll continue to urge both sides to work together to avoid a strike.”

Union leaders described Hochul’s recent remarks on avoiding a strike as “encouraging,” but countered that there is still a gap in labor talks between the two sides. Meanwhile, Gary Dellaverson, labor counsel for the MTA, said the latest round of talks marked “the first time that [the unions] actually made a move.”

“To say that we’re close is far-fetched,” said Kevin Sexton, a spokesperson for the LIRR union coalition and a vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen.

LIRR workers last went on strike in June 1994, shutting down service for two days. More recently, New Jersey Transit workers struck for three days last May.

Rob Free, president of the LIRR, said at a Wednesday afternoon briefing that a strike is “the last thing we want.”

“We are trying to negotiate in good faith … we’re making offers, that’s what this is about — negotiations,” Free said. “You may not like the initial offer, but that’s why there’s give and take, alternate proposals.”

Caught in the middle are employers in the city and on Long Island, commuters and businesses that depend on them — especially on the eve of Memorial Day weekend.

“Having no railroad available — which would exacerbate our traffic congestion problem on Long Island — would just be a confluence of many factors that would really be damaging to our economy in the tone of like tens of millions of dollars per day,” said Stacey Sikes, acting president of the Long Island Association, which represents the island’s business community.

According to the MTA, Nassau County accounted for approximately 37% of LIRR ridership in the first four months of 2026, with another 15% from Suffolk County. In the city, Manhattan made up 26% of the ridership, compared with 20% from Queens and 3% from stations in Brooklyn.

If the strike goes through and lasts more than a few days, it could run up against another big to-do directly upstairs from Penn Station: the Knicks playing in the NBA Conference Finals at Madison Square Garden.

Maulin Mehta, New York director of the Regional Plan Association, said a short-term shutdown would be less likely to have “major repercussions” across the regional economy, but warned of the potential fallout of an extended walkout.

“The challenge is more so felt if this drags on for any long period of time,” Mehta said. “That could put jobs in jeopardy if people are starting to spend more time calling out of work because they don’t want to deal with the commute or are unable to get to work because the options that are in place are not sufficient.”

At the commuter railroad’s Locust Manor stop in southeast Queens, rail commuter Maurice Moore said that should a strike happen, he will likely drive his van to overnight shifts as a patient care technician at NYU Langone Health in Manhattan.

“I take the train to save on the cost of fuel,” he said. “If there’s a strike, I still have to go to work, so I will have to take my ride.”

Everyl McMorris, who commutes on the LIRR between her home in Suffolk County and her job in Manhattan, said she was taking some comfort in past labor battles that went down to the wire but didn’t result in a strike.

“We sort of plan for the worst and hope for the best,” said McMorris, who works as a physician’s assistant. “I’ve seen discussions in the past about potential strikes and it hasn’t happened, so I’m hoping that this is just one of those things.”

At the newsstand he operates inside Jamaica Station, Mandeep Talwar said he’s dreading the potential for a subdued Monday morning rush in the transit hub that also features connections to the subway and the JFK AirTrain.

“The strike must not happen, it would be like hell, no person in the station,” said Talwar, who estimated that 70% of his customers take the LIRR. “It will be maybe me alone in the station and no customers.”

“And if there are no customers, what will I do, sit in the station the whole day long? I’d have to close the store.”

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Demolition might conjure images of bulldozers, sledgehammers and wrecking balls slamming into structures that crumble dramatically. 

But in New York’s Good Cause Eviction Law, the definition of “demolish” is not straightforward. What does it mean to demolish a home? And can a landlord demolish just an apartment, or an entire building?

Those are questions looming over tenants whose landlords opted not to renew their leases by citing an intent to demolish. It’s one of the few reasons a landlord can evict rent-paying tenants in unregulated apartments under the 2024 law, which caps rent increases and requires landlords to offer most tenants renewal leases.

“We don’t know what demolition of an apartment means,” said Ellen Davidson, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society who worked on the law. “It’s a live question.”

For several tenants in New York City, the right to remain in their homes hinges on the answers — like for roommates Feryal Nawaz, Carla Orlandi and Parisa, whose landlord refused to renew the lease for their East Village apartment, citing a plan to demolish it.

The roommates, all 27 years old, were excited to stay in their three-bedroom, 1.5-bathroom apartment. They’d become close, hosting movie nights and decorating for each other’s birthdays. Their home became a central gathering place for friends; they kept deflated air mattresses in a corner of the living room for guests staying over.

Over many previous months, the roommates had rebuffed their landlord’s offers of several thousand dollars to leave early. But then the landlord officially said they had to leave when their lease is up at the end of June. Facing the uncertainty of the Good Cause Eviction Law, the roommates have been reaching out to tenant hotlines, lawyers and their local representatives to seek insight before they make plans to either move out, or head to court.

“There’s so many loopholes in these laws,” said Parisa, who declined to share her last name. “If it’s really meant to protect us, you shouldn’t have to be a lawyer. You shouldn’t have to go to court and fight and hope and pray.”

The roommates said they’d make a decision about next steps by the beginning of June.

“As May still plays out, I’m not jumping to any conclusions,” Nawaz said. “I want to make sure that we put up a fight regardless, even if we do end up leaving.”

David Hazout, an agent of the LLC that owns the roommates’ apartment building, declined to comment. A lawyer representing the LLC had sent the roommates renovation plans that show the kitchen and one of the bathrooms would be relocated within the unit. Permits filed with the Department of Buildings in March show plans to renovate 10 apartments in the building, records show.

But does a renovation count as a demolition? And what is the definition of a “housing accommodation”? That’s the opaque term the Good Cause law uses to refer to where tenants live. 

Shafeeqa Kolia, a spokesperson for Sen. Julia Salazar, sponsor of the Good Cause law, said the provision was intended to refer to the demolition of a whole building. Kolia said the Senator’s team would look into drafting legislation to clarify the definition of “demolish” in the law.

Absent a legislative update, those key questions must be answered in court.

Defining Demolition

Already, there are at least two cases in Housing Court that are grappling with what “demolition” really means.

One case concerns some tenants of two apartments in an East Village building, just three blocks north of Fawaz, Orlandi and Parisa. In March 2024, those other tenants got notice from their landlord that their leases would not be renewed. In that notice, the landlord indicated the “housing accommodation” would be demolished; in later court documents, the owner said they would renovate the apartments. 

The tenants’ lawyer, who declined to comment for this story, cited the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of demolish in court documents: “pull or knock down (a building)”… “to tear down,” “to destroy,” “to flatten,” “to raze” and “wipe off the face of the earth.”

The lawyer argued a single apartment cannot be demolished, and that a demolition is not the same thing as a renovation.

Tracy Ferdinand, the judge presiding over the case said that an individual apartment — not an entire building — could be considered a “housing accommodation,” but left open whether a renovation counts as a demolition.

The landlord submitted architecture reports and cost estimates for the renovations. But the judge, too, resorted to a dictionary definition of demolish — this time, from Merriam-Webster — to cast doubt on whether those documents established plans to demolish the apartments, and ultimately said they failed to do so.

The case will go to trial. But whatever the court decides, it likely won’t affect other tenants fighting similar evictions. Legal precedent can only be set through appeals courts.

That means another case in Housing Court may end up with a totally different outcome compared to what happens in the East Village tenants’ case. The second case concerns the tenants of five apartments in an Upper West Side building, whose landlord would not renew leases because of demolition plans. (The tenants declined to comment for this story.)

The building is a Renaissance Revival-style townhouse in a historic district, and the lawyer representing the tenants, James Fishman, pointed out demolition would require the approval of the city Landmarks Preservation Commission. He, too, argued that demolition was not the same as renovation, and that a single apartment in a building could not be demolished.

“I think the whole point of the statute is to protect tenants in their apartments, and this is kind of a loophole,” Fishman said.

Neither the landlord nor the attorney representing the landlord in the Upper West Side case responded to requests for comment.

Worth the Fight?

While “demolish” stays undefined as it relates to the Good Cause law, risks remain for tenants who want to try to stay in their apartments while a landlord is claiming demolition.

“You have to decide whether it’s worth fighting when we don’t know for certain how the statute is going to be interpreted,” said Davidson, the Legal Aid lawyer. She said she’d ask the landlord for records of permits and architectural plans for any proposed demolition.

Sherwin Belkin, an attorney who represents landlords, said he would tell any clients who would want to evict tenants under Good Cause that they’d need to pursue at least a gut renovation.

“You’re leaving the four walls of the apartment and maybe some of the partitions, but I wouldn’t leave in much more. The more you leave, the more there’s issues about whether or not you’re demolishing,” Belkin said. “Your best case is to create a blank box.”

Housing lawyers do not expect courts to come to a final determination on what “demolish” means for at least a year as cases and appeals proceed.

In the meantime, tenants like Nawaz, Orlandi and Parisa are left to navigate uncharted waters.

“It does suck being the guinea pig, but I’m not entirely mad about it,” Nawaz said. “I do think this is probably happening to a lot of people out there … It’s not just about us.”

The roommates suspect the landlord will renovate the apartment — as has been done with other units in the building — and increase the rent. They’re already paying about $6,200 for their apartment. 

They’re also worried about the prospect of finding a new place. Nawaz and Orlandi have been in the apartment for almost three years, the longest they’ve lived in a place since college, they said. Parisa moved in last year after coming from Atlanta and not knowing anyone in New York, but made fast friends with the two others.

Above all, the three roommates are frustrated about the ambiguity in the Good Cause Eviction Law.

“This was supposed to be put in place to help out the tenants,” Orlandi said. “But they made the lines so blurred and all the words so vague that no one knows — not even lawyers, not even ChatGPT — no one knows what that even means.”

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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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The city’s Correction Department is set to renew a multimillion-dollar contract with a prison telecom giant that’s bragged of using recordings of detainees’ private phone calls to train its artificial intelligence model.  

The Mamdani administration plans to pay Securus Technologies up to $23 million over five years for phone service used by roughly 7,000 people detained on Rikers Island, according to a notice in the City Record. The contract is set to begin July 1.

The Brooklyn Defenders legal aid group and technology experts are urging the Mamdani administration to scrap the agreement, arguing it could hand over vast amounts of personal data including recordings, voiceprints and social connections to a private company with limited oversight and a checkered history.

The conversations people in jail have with their loved ones include intimate moments and private, vulnerable, interactions. It was unclear if, in addition to being recorded, the private calls of New York City detainees are being used to train Securus’ AI model. 

In a memo opposing the contract, Brooklyn Defenders warned of “a community surveillance apparatus that reaches far beyond jail walls, sweeping up the families, friends, and communities of incarcerated New Yorkers without their knowledge.”

Securus began developing AI systems in 2023 using its archive of recorded jail calls to train models designed to flag potential criminal activity, company president Kevin Elder told MIT Technology Review.

One model, he said, was built using seven years of calls from the Texas prison system, with additional efforts underway to create similar tools tailored to other states and localities.

Over the past year, the company has been testing these tools to analyze inmate conversations in real time, according to Elder. 

He described the system as capable of scanning what he called a “treasure trove” of data, using large language models to identify signs that a crime may be planned, with the goal of detecting potential criminal activity earlier in its development.

Correction officials pushed back on several of the concerns raised by advocates — particularly related to immigration enforcement — saying the agency has not enrolled in Securus’ broader data-sharing network.

“The Department has not opted-in to any data or information sharing application with external users,” spokesperson Latima Johnson said in a statement. 

The contract’s confidentiality provisions bar Securus from sharing reports or data without prior written approval from the department, she added.

Department officials declined to answer detailed questions about whether federal immigration authorities have ever sought access to the data, or whether the new contract contains additional safeguards related to AI or third-party integrations.

The proposed contract has not been made available to the public.

Advocates point out Securus was found to have improperly recorded hundreds of attorney-client calls from Rikers, which was later disclosed to prosecutors in 2020 and 2021. 

The issue came to light after public defenders discovered the recordings in evidence shared by prosecutors. The company ultimately deleted the affected calls and worked with the city to overhaul safeguards.

Representatives for Securus, headquartered in Dallas, did not respond to an email seeking comment. 

‘Swept Into These Systems’

Zina Maka, a law professor who studies prison surveillance and emerging technologies, said prison systems historically operate with broad secrecy and legal deference.

“A lot of things that happen in the prison space are subject to a significant amount of opacity,” she told THE CITY.

The introduction of technology has improved communication in jails and prisons — detainees now have access to tablets for video calls — and educational offerings for incarcerated people. 

But it also expands surveillance beyond jail walls, Maka said. 

“Families who have done nothing wrong are increasingly swept into these systems simply because they’re communicating with someone in custody,” she said.

Critics noted Securus’ THREADS platform, which aggregates call recordings, transcripts, voiceprints and financial data to map social connections and flag behavioral patterns that investigators deem suspicious.

Securus previously said the database included information from more than 1.5 million people — including many who were never incarcerated but had received calls from someone who was.

The Correction Department says recorded calls to and from Rikers are not part of the THREADS community. 

Current jail officials did not detail what, if any, privacy protections would be part of the new contract. 

Brooklyn Defenders also raised concerns about a feature that allows participating agencies to share data across jurisdictions. If enabled, that tool could pool New York City jail data with information from facilities in other states — including some that routinely detain immigrants for federal authorities. 

That could potentially allow outside investigators to search data on New Yorkers locked up on Rikers, critics of the new contract say. 

DOC officials maintained that none of the calls would be shared with ICE. 

‘Control every word’

Bianca Tylek, executive director of advocacy group Worth Rises, said the Correction Department should stop recording detainee calls altogether..

“People’s detention is the punishment,” she told THE CITY. “But there are tons of private moments — conversations about family finances, mental health, things that have nothing to do with crime — that really shouldn’t be the purview of the government.”

Tylek also pointed to the impact on people outside the jail system. 

“It’s not just the person who’s incarcerated,” she said. “Families who have done nothing wrong are caught up in this surveillance — their voices are recorded, databased and stored for years, if not forever.”

One mother, whose son has been held on Rikers Island for more than two years, said the constant monitoring has fundamentally changed how they speak to each other.

“We have to control every word,” the woman, who asked not to be named, told THE CITY. “It’s impossible to really talk with my son about his children.”

She said her son sometimes breaks down crying on the phone but avoids discussing why because he assumes the conversations are being recorded.

Tylek noted that recording calls made from jail only started in 2008 under former Commissioner Martin Horn. Initially, the calls would be kept for 18 months before being erased. DOC did not say if that is still the case. Horn has long argued the recordings are a key tool to keeping people safe in jail and for prosecutors to bolster their criminal cases. 

Tylek noted that city officials have never publicly disclosed data on how often the recorded calls have led to those outcomes. 

“We’ve asked DOC to share how many hours they are recording and what percentage of those calls are being flagged for any security purposes,” she said. 

Commissioner Defends Contract

The contract renewal with Securus was spearheaded by James Conroy, the department’s deputy commissioner for legal matters. Conroy, who spent 25 years with the NYPD’s legal department, joined Corrections in 2024. 

The proposed deal must still be formally registered by City Comptroller Mark Levine. His office is reviewing the contract, which will likely take several weeks, spokesperson Terrence Cullen said. 

The contract extension comes as the Mamdani administration has hired a senior advisor for technology and innovation to oversee the city’s expanded use of AI. Rashida Richardson, a civil rights attorney, previously served as senior counsel at Mastercard. 

Asked about the Securus deal, she responded, “I have to decline.”

The contract comes as new Corrections Commissioner Stanley Richards has publicly talked about his difficult experience as a detainee on Rikers during the 1980s as he struggled with addiction. 

Richards defended the contract at an unrelated event last week, saying the calls would not be shared with ICE.

Asked if he’d have been concerned about his calls from Rikers Island to his father being recorded back in the day, Richards responded, “No.”

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Councilmember Vickie Paladino and the City Council settled their ethics feud over her anti-Muslim social media posts, with the Queens Republican agreeing to delete her tweets and remove any mention of her job on her personal accounts.

The charges filed March 2 by the Council’s ethics committee were permanently withdrawn, according to a court filing. In turn, Paladino withdrew a lawsuit she filed against the Council.

The Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics voted in early March to charge Paladino for social media posts she made after Zohran Mamdani was elected as the city’s first Muslim mayor, and a tweet she published after an ISIS-inspired terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia.

In one now-deleted tweet, she posted that “we need to take very seriously the need to begin the expulsion of Muslims from western nations, or at the very least the severe sanction of them within western borders.” 

Under the settlement, Paladino will have to modify her account on X to remove “council woman” from her display name, and delete three tweets that are still up. 

Paladino will also have to make a public statement.

“To be clear, my personal social-media posts were not directed at any Council Member or staff,” she will be required to post. “I am responsible for the content, I never intended to make Council Members or staff feel unwelcome or unsafe in their work environment. I send a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to the court for facilitating this resolution.”

Councilmember Sandra Ung, the chair of the ethics committee, is also required to post that she believes “the resolution strikes the right balance between protection of council staff and the first amendment liberties of council members.”

Paladino was represented by Jim Walden, a failed 2025 mayoral candidate. He argued in at least one hearing that the tempest was a free speech issue, and provided examples of other Council members posting their own opinions about police officers or, in some cases, white people.

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