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  • MAMDANI’S FIRST 100 DAYS: Mayor, Speaker Menin unite to open long-delayed child care center as property tax dispute loom | amNewYork

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    Thursday, Feb. 19, marks the 50th day of Zohran Mamdani’s term as mayor. amNewYork is following Mamdani around his first 100 days in office as we closely track his progress on fulfilling campaign promises, appointing key leaders to government posts, and managing the city’s finances. Here’s a summary of what the mayor did.

    Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin appeared side by side Thursday morning to announce the opening of a long-delayed early childhood education center on the Upper East Side, offering a moment of alignment amid deeper, growing divisions over the city budget and proposed protest restriction leglislation.

    The Feb. 19 announcement marked the official opening of the District 2 Pre-K and 3-K Center at 403 East 65th St., a former parking garage completed in July 2025 that had sat unused for months under the prior administration. The center will open this fall, according to the mayor, adding more than 130 seats and becoming the first standalone, city-run early childhood education facility in the 10065 ZIP code.

    Officials said the center will quadruple 3-K capacity and double Pre-K capacity in the neighborhood, addressing a longstanding shortage that had forced families either to travel outside the area or pay for private child care. Families have until Feb. 27 to apply for seats.

    “While New York City families waited anxiously for child care options near their homes, the last administration refused to move with the urgency this crisis demands,” Mamdani said. “In the wealthiest city in the world, no parent should be forced to choose between raising their child and keeping their job.”

    Menin praised the opening as a “big win” for families and credited years of pressure from Community Board 8 and local parents. “The building has been ready, and families have been waiting,” she said, calling the delays under the previous administration unacceptable.

    “This is really a sign of what we need to do city wide, to open up more child care facilities, to make sure that every single parent that needs a slot for 3k and pre K has it,” Speaker Menin added. 

    Protests and NYPD

    Menin and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal spoke early in the event and left before the press conference’s Q&A, which would focus on issues where the mayor and the Council speaker are not currently aligned.

    Among them: proposed legislation introduced by Menin through the City Council’s newly formed Committee to Combat Hate. The bill would require the NYPD to develop and implement fixed security perimeters of up to 100 feet around entrances and exits of places of religious worship. A separate, closely related bill sponsored by Bronx City Council Member Eric Dinowitz would apply the same framework to educational facilities.

    In response to the staggering number of antisemitic hate crimes reported across the city, Menin, the Council’s first Jewish Speaker, rolled out a five-point plan last month to combat antisemitism, which includes the protest perimeter bill to protect congregants, creating a dedicated antisemitism reporting hotline, funding security at private schools, and providing community-based security training for Jewish organizations.

    The introduction Menin’s protest legislation was a direct result of two separate and widely condemned demonstrations near synagogues in Manhattan and Queens. Her bill followed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s support for similar legislation during her State of the State address which would ban protests within 25 feet of houses of worship.

    Mayor Mamdani on Thursday said that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has expressed concerns about the proposed buffer zone legislations, apparently what City & State had reported.

    A spokesperson for the NYPD also confirmed that Commissioner Tisch raised issued with the initial drafting of the bills, “and she is working closely with the speaker’s office to ensure that the language of the bill maintains the NYPD’s flexibility to both protect houses of worship and facilitate first amendment rights.” The bill is due to be discussed at a council hearing on Feb. 25.

    Mamdani said he has also directed the city’s Law Department and the NYPD to review its legality. 

    “I care deeply about ensuring that New Yorkers can worship freely in their own city, and that we also protect the First Amendment rights to protest at the same time,” Mamdani said, stopping short of endorsing the legislation.

    “We are expanding the amount of funding for our office to combat anti-Semitism, and we are also looking to utilize every tool at our disposal to ensure that we root out bigotry from across the five boroughs,” the mayor added.

    A spokesperson for the Speaker’s office said Menin has had “multiple productive conversations with Commissioner Tish and the commissioner had a few minor tweaks to the bill which will be included in a new version.” They did not clarify what those tweaks entail. 

    The mayor has already taken steps to balance the rights to protest and worship. Last month, he quietly reinstated an Adams-era executive order he had previously revoked: one that directed the NYPD to better regulate protests outside houses of worship, including synagogues.

    Photo by Lloyd Mitchell

    A separate Adams-era directive to increase the NYPD’s uniformed headcount by 5,000 officers amid a growing staffing crisis was officially shelved by Mamdani in his preliminary budget on Tuesday.  

    Before being elected Mayor, then-candidate Mamdani said he had no intention of following through on the plan outlined in Adams’ November budget outline, and instead committed to maintaining the NYPD headcount as it is.

    In his $127 billion preliminary budget, the NYPD’s allocation is slated to go from roughly $6.4 billion this year to around $6.38 billion in 2027. After that slight decline, projected spending would rise again, reaching nearly $6.44 billion by 2030. 

    The budget plan sets aside $421 million to plug funding gaps the administration says were overlooked, such as mounting overtime costs within the police department, upgrading an aging fleet of squad cars, and paying for expanding and maintaining high-tech monitoring systems

    The department has lost an average of 316 officers per month in 2025 due to retirements and resignations, and its current headcount is below the budgeted levels.

    When asked about the pushback against not increasing he headcount, Mamdani said he is focused on addressing the department’s retention crisis, trying to reduce the “expanding number of responsibilities we’ve given to those officers.”

    Mamdani said his proposed Department of Community Safety was one way to shift the many responsibilities from officers and address overtime, noting that police are currently dispatched to roughly 200,000 mental health–related calls. Funding for the proposed Department is not included in the preliminary budget but will be added to the executive budget expected in late April, according to the mayor. 

    Property tax

    To eliminate the current budget gap, Mamdani on Tuesday outlined two options: secure Albany’s approval to raise taxes on top earners and corporations, or — if that effort falls short — turn to measures the city controls, such as a 9.5% property tax increase and tapping reserves. He described the property tax hike as a “last resort.”

    However, both approaches face steep obstacles. Gov. Kathy Hochul has firmly rejected new taxes as she campaigns for reelection, and Speaker Julie Menin has also dismissed the idea of raising property taxes.

    Menin’s appearance with Mamdani on Thursday followed an interview the day earlier on the right-wing radio show of  Sid Rosenberg on WABC Radio, where she criticized Mamdani’s preliminary budget proposal. Rosenberg has drawn criticism in the past, having labeled Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, a “terrorist” and claiming during the campaign that he would be “cheering” another 9/11. 

    Since the unveiling of his preliminary budget, Menin has said that potential property tax hikes should not be discussed amid the current affordability crisis. Speaking to Rosenberg on Wednesday, she emphasized that the City Council has the final say over property taxes and made clear it will not approve any hike. 

    Menin said shifting additional costs onto small homeowners and businesses during an affordability crunch is unacceptable, and “either dipping into the rainy day reserves or proposing any kind of property tax increase is not on the table for us.”

    Asked by a Politico reporter about Menin’s appearance on Rosenberg’s show after his Islamophobic comments about Hizzoner, Mamdani said he would let the Speaker answer that.

    A spokesperson for the Speaker’s office said Menin’s appearance on Rosenberg’s show was one of many media hits she did that day to discuss the budget but that she “vehemently disagrees” with the hosts views and past remarks about the Mayor. 

    “Speaker Menin vehemently disagrees with Sid Rosenberg on a whole range of topics. She strongly condemns his Islamophobic rhetoric. She appeared on WABC radio, as well as numerous outlets, to speak to New Yorkers about the impact of the city budget,” the spokesperson said. 

    Separately, Commissioner Tisch reportedly met Rosenberg for dinner last month, according to the Daily News.

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    Adam Daly

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  • The Cold Has Been Mamdani’s First Serious Test. The Results Have Been Mixed.

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    Photo: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

    Six weeks into his tenure, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been confronted with controversies both grave and frivolous. He wisely stood by a top appointee who was facing down a media circus for tweets that were more than a half-decade old. He grappled with the fallout from several police-involved shootings and navigated how, as a democratic socialist who must partner with a much more conservative NYPD commissioner, he should respond.

    And he faced down, like just about every mayor before him, the weather. The results were mixed. They offered both encouraging signs for a 34-year-old politician who is going to endure more scrutiny than all of his recent predecessors and warnings for an administration that promised sweeping change but still finds itself struggling with the balky machinery of government. With such high expectations placed upon him, it might grow more difficult for Mamdani to survive, unscathed, crises like the 19 New Yorkers who died outside during a historic cold snap. (An additional seven city residents died in their own homes.)

    Before a large snowstorm barreled into New York City at the end of January, the great political question for Mamdani was how quickly his Sanitation Department could get the roadways clear and how well he could communicate the meteorological threat. On that front, Mamdani was plainly successful. He was on television and social media constantly, and he projected the energy and verve he was known for on the campaign trail. This was nothing like Michael Bloomberg ducking a snowstorm for Bermuda or John Lindsay, more than a half-century ago, failing to anticipate a massive snowfall that would kill 42 New Yorkers and paralyze the outer boroughs. Mamdani didn’t even have to beat back criticism that certain neighborhoods were wholly neglected, like de Blasio with the Upper East Side in 2014.

    Had the weather been merely seasonal after the snow fell, Mamdani would have received his kudos and skipped along to February. Instead, New York and much of the Northeast endured the most brutal cold in decades. For nine consecutive days, the temperature didn’t climb above freezing. Though this did not technically break a record — in 2018, New York temperatures remained at or below freezing for 14 consecutive days — the lows were in the single digits with horrifying windchill. Large portions of the city waterways iced over completely.

    To an extent, the obvious challenge of the cold has insulated Mamdani from greater backlash. The New York Post has hammered him repeatedly, and Julie Menin, the Speaker of the City Council and a possible future mayoral candidate, recently said the New Yorkers who died from the cold “should be alive today,” but there isn’t much evidence — yet — that Mamdani is paying a tremendous political price for the climbing death toll. The Post has tried to blame the cold deaths on Mamdani’s decision to end the sweeps of homeless encampments, but there’s scant evidence most of the New Yorkers who died outside were living in any of these camps. What is helping Mamdani is that two of the city officials who were charged with overseeing the response to the cold snap were Eric Adams holdovers who are about to leave the new administration. Both Molly Wasow Park, the commissioner of the Department of Social Services, and Zach Iscol, the city’s emergency management commissioner, are set to resign, making way for Mamdani’s own appointees.

    What could have been done differently? A clear answer hasn’t yet emerged. At a recent City Council hearing, Park said the outdoor deaths fall outside historical norms; in a typical year, an average of ten to 20 homeless people die in the city from hypothermia. It’s actually not known exactly how many of the 19 people who died were homeless. (At least a quarter may have had permanent housing.) Questions have emerged over whether the city was forceful enough when it came to removing people, even against their will, from the streets as the deadly cold descended. The police testified that they have made, since January 19, at least 52 involuntary removals. The city hasn’t revealed how many people have been left on the streets after an interaction with a clinician or police officer instead of being involuntarily committed.

    It does appear, at the very minimum, the Mamdani administration was caught somewhat flatfooted. Warming buses were introduced but signage was initially missing. One city councilman said the 311 call he made for a distressed homeless person was never returned. Mamdani said, in the future, he might encourage more New Yorkers in such a situation to call 911 instead of 311. “New Yorkers have been told to cast blame in different places, but I am the mayor,” Mamdani said last week.

    At least one administration spokesperson, though, attempted to deflect blame entirely, contra Mamdani. When the Post pressed City Hall for more information about the New Yorkers who had died of the cold indoors, Dora Pekec, the Mamdani spokesperson, said they wouldn’t be releasing additional information because they did not die on city property. “People die in their homes all the time,” Pekec said, which is, if technically true, also callous.

    We do not know if other mayors — Bloomberg, de Blasio, Adams, or anyone else — would have handled the response to the cold differently. It’s hard, still, to discern how much of the death was inevitable and how much a result of sclerotic city systems Mamdani has yet to overhaul, letting down the most vulnerable New Yorkers. As a new mayor, Mamdani can claim, credibly, he is still grappling with inefficiencies created by Adams and others. New Yorkers will offer him leeway. How long that leeway lasts is one of the operative questions of his administration.

    Mamdani stormed into City Hall like no other mayor before him on a wave of unprecedented voter enthusiasm and global celebrity. The stakes are dramatically raised. He has promised a new era for the city, and he’s now tasked with delivering it. What will be most damaging to his project is disillusionment and cynicism. If it seems like the city still doesn’t work as it should — or like the problems of past administrations, now matter how daunting, aren’t being addressed — the bloom might come off the Mamdani rose.

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    Ross Barkan

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