{"id":182781,"date":"2026-04-01T22:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/182781\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T22:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:24:11","slug":"city-council-proposes-6b-savings-plan-to-plug-budget-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/182781\/","title":{"rendered":"City Council proposes $6B savings plan to plug budget gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

The City Council on Wednesday unveiled its own $6 billion savings plan<\/a> to plug the city\u2019s budget gap.<\/p>\n

City Council Speaker Julie Menin revealed the proposal as an alternative to Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s approach<\/a> that calls for possible increased property taxes and dipping into the city\u2019s savings.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

The City Council on Wednesday unveiled its $6 billion savings plan to plug the city\u2019s budget gap
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City Council Speaker Julie Menin revealed the proposal as an alternative to Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s approach
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The plan aims to plug the hole by re-estimating the city\u2019s costs and revenues
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the Council budget \u201cunrealistic\u201d because of its lack of a revenue source<\/p>\n

“We can find the savings in the way that we did without cutting services. So are position has been clear: we have been a hard no on the property tax and we\u2019re also a hard no on raiding the rainy day fund,” she said.<\/p>\n

The plan aims to plug the hole by re-estimating the city\u2019s costs and revenues<\/a>. Menin said $3.5 billion can be saved through things like increasing the Department of Buildings’ revenues by $80 million for permits and late fees and re-estimating the costs of city salaries to not fund vacant positions, which could save $860 million.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Menin said another $2.5 billion would be saved through things like auditing Department of Education contracts, which would save $175 million, and re-estimating debt service savings to include an additional $204 million in savings.<\/p>\n

It’s a plan that got a failing grade from the mayor.<\/p>\n

“Cherry picking specific expense items that have a surplus without accounting for the fact that those are the very surpluses that are typically used for deficits in departments in agencies does not present an honest picture of what this budget is,” Mamdani said.<\/p>\n

He called the Council budget “unrealistic” because of its lack of a revenue source. At an unrelated press conference, Mamdani<\/a> criticized some of the Council proposals, like the vacancy savings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“That kind of a plan puts the city on the hook for money that will not actually appear, it will force the city to cut services elsewhere to find that kind of funding,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani put forth his own billion-dollar savings proposal last month, which he plans to detail in the coming weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s not unusual for the two sides of City Hall to lock horns over the city\u2019s fiscal priorities. With three months to go, there is still time for the Council and the mayor to negotiate a final deal.<\/p>\n

“You shouldn\u2019t really have any budget dance around this. I think what we\u2019ve done here is identify a number of areas of responsible savings,” said Menin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City Council on Wednesday unveiled its own $6 billion savings plan to plug the city\u2019s budget gap.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[109,25,6348,9,24,55,54,12,56,108,87,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-182781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-kelly-mena","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-city-news","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182781","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=182781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}