Last year, when Zohran Mamdani was running for mayor, he said something that really stuck with me. He said: “If you want to tell someone they can’t vend because they don’t have a permit, but you don’t give them a way to get one, you leave people with a diminishing faith in government.”
He was right.
In fact, he said it again and again in different ways: New Yorkers can disagree with politicians, but what they can’t stand is when they don’t trust them. That was the message. That was the promise. Now look at what he’s doing.
The mayor just announced a sweeping expansion of 15 mile-per-hour speed limits around schools – not just during school hours, not just when kids are present, but 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Let’s be clear: everyone supports safer streets around schools. No one is arguing against protecting children. I certainly am not. But applying a 15 mph limit at midnight on a Tuesday in front of a closed school isn’t about safety. It’s about something else, and New Yorkers know it.
Because when government tells you something is about safety, but it only makes sense part of the time, people start to wonder what’s really going on the rest of the time. That’s where trust begins to erode.
Mamdani understands this – or at least he used to. He built an entire campaign around the idea that government has to be honest and competent in the small things if it wants people to believe in the big things.
So here’s the question: how does a 24-hour school-zone speed limit pass that test?
If the goal is safety, then enforce lower speeds when children are actually arriving and leaving school. Add a buffer before and after dismissal. Increase enforcement during those hours. Make it real, visible, and effective. Don’t tell people this is about protecting kids while enforcing it at times when no kids are around.
When you do that, it starts to feel less like safety and more like a hidden tax – another way to squeeze drivers through tickets and automated enforcement, and once people start to believe that, you’ve lost them. That’s the real danger here.
Not just that drivers will be frustrated – though they will be, especially in places like Staten Island where people depend on their cars every day. It’s that this kind of policy undermines confidence in everything else the mayor says.
If City Hall isn’t being straight with New Yorkers about something as simple and visible as a speed limit, why should anyone trust them on the bigger promises?
Free buses. Free childcare. Sweeping reforms. Massive new programs. All of it requires public trust.
Trust isn’t built with speeches. It’s built with consistency. It’s built when the policy matches the explanation. It’s built when people feel like they’re being treated fairly – not managed, not misled, and not quietly taxed under the guise of something else.
Mamdani once said that the problem with politics isn’t disagreement – it’s distrust. He was absolutely right.
The problem now is that he’s proving his own point, and New Yorkers are paying attention.
(Frank Morano is a Republican representing Staten Island’s South Shore in the New York City Council.)