Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked his return to work Monday after enjoying family time in upstate New York last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lovely time upstate. Bounced around. Missed the city, missed you guys. Happy to be home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
To welcome him back was a pair of new lawsuits challenging his plan for city-run grocery stores.<\/p>\n
A group of business owners is arguing that the plan discriminates against minority-owned stores that won\u2019t be able to compete with the city groceries\u2019 discounted prices. The lawsuit asks that a judge halt the plans for one grocery store in each borough.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen in fact with Essex Street Market in Manhattan, as well as Morris Street Market in Brooklyn, a model where the city has subsidized groceries and it has not had a negative effect on bodegas,\u201d Mamdani said at an unrelated event Monday. \u201cI\u2019m confident with both the legality of this, that it\u2019ll stand up in court and the importance of delivering it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Mamdani\u2019s family vacation coincided with a City Council hearing on the rollout of a tax on luxury second homes. Some New Yorkers have expressed frustration over the rollout and some local lawmakers were upset that no one from his administration attended the hearing.<\/p>\n
The mayor explained his team\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t believe it would be in the legal interest to the city to send a senior representative,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A court date in that lawsuit is set for later this month. Mamdani also played defense for his political allies.<\/p>\n
One of the leaders of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has come under fire for not previously disclosing that he lives in a $1.5 million home and that he is no longer a union electrician.<\/p>\n
Mamdani was asked about whether Gustavo Gordillo\u2019s lifestyle is consistent with the group\u2019s working-class affordability movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone who is focused on delivering a more affordable life for the people of New York City \u2014 a fairer life for the people of New York City and frankly of those of the world should be welcomed into this work. And that\u2019s what I see so many doing,\u201d the mayor said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a statement to NY1, co-chair of the NYC DSA Grace Mausser said she welcomed the mayor standing in solidarity with Gordillo.<\/p>\n
\u201cNYC-DSA is led by a diverse group of volunteers who have beaten the ruling class and delivered real wins for working class people again and again. We agree with Zohran than (sic) people who come from privilege and wealth, who see up close exactly how our economic system keeps large swaths of people in poverty, and still choose to fight for socialism and redistribute the obscene wealth of the ruling class are on the right side of history,\u201d Mausser said.<\/p>\n
Before being peppered with a slew of questions, Mamdani announced a new park program called the \u201cRenew Crew\u201d aimed at making quick fixes of broken or chipped equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe overgrown tennis court, the rusted swing set, the bench that needs a new coat of paint. If it is run down this crew will renew it,\u201d Mamdani said.<\/p>\n
The new crews will consist of 24 skilled workers who will work on projects for three weeks or less before moving on.<\/p>\n
The crew will work from April to October across all five boroughs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked his return to work Monday after enjoying family time in upstate New York last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328879,"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":["post-328878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-kelly-mena","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328878","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=328878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}