By Maria Tsvetkova<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, March 3 (Reuters) – New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state Governor Kathy Hochul appeared together on Tuesday to announce that 2,000 \u200cfree childcare places will be offered to two-year-olds in the nation’s largest city \u200cstarting later this year, a small first step toward fulfilling the new mayor’s ambitious campaign promise of free childcare \u200bfor all.<\/p>\n
The program, which the leaders said will grow next year to 12,000 free spots for an estimated 100,000 two-year-old New Yorkers, will not require the tax increases Mamdani sought and the governor opposed. He and Hochul did not address funding plans beyond next year.<\/p>\n
Funding for \u200cthe program called 2K – $73 million for \u2060the first year and $425 million for the second – will come from New York State, and is part of the $1.2 billion the state has \u2060committed to invest in free early childcare.<\/p>\n
Hochul, asked by reporters about possible tax hikes to fund the program, said, “We can do it with existing revenues. Take what I’m saying as your answer.”<\/p>\n
Mamdani \u200bdid \u200bnot address how the program would be paid \u200bfor during the appearance, but said, “we’re \u200cmaking what Wall Street would call a good investment. Researchers estimate that every dollar spent on early childcare returns as much as $13.”<\/p>\n
The expansion of universal childcare, along with a rent freeze and free buses, was central to Mamdani’s campaign. His first term began in January.<\/p>\n
Funding concerns became an obstacle to cancelling bus fares. Asked about free buses last month, the \u200cmayor said that “it continues to be a budget conversation” \u200bas the city looks for replacement revenue for \u200bthe Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the New York \u200bState-run network that operates public transit.<\/p>\n
The prices for rent-stabilized apartments that \u200cMamdani promised to freeze will be discussed \u200blater this year at \u200ba meeting of the Rent Guidelines Board in charge of establishing rent adjustments for the city’s roughly 1 million regulated units. Last month, Mamdani appointed a majority \u200bof the board’s members, including \u200cits chair.<\/p>\n
The meeting on future rent rates has not yet been scheduled. In \u200bthe previous year, the board held it in late June.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Maria \u200bTsvetkova; editing by Donna Bryson and David Gaffen)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maria Tsvetkova NEW YORK, March 3 (Reuters) – New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state Governor Kathy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[63424,24825,63423,426,9,24,55,54,49,56,82],"class_list":["post-151878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-ambitious-campaign-promise","tag-free-childcare","tag-free-childcare-places","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-ny","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}