{"id":38944,"date":"2025-11-14T00:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T00:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/38944\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T00:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T00:35:10","slug":"nyc-council-backs-mamdani-push-for-increased-childcare-funding-from-albany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/38944\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Council backs Mamdani push for increased childcare funding from Albany"},"content":{"rendered":"

The City Council on Thursday endorsed Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani\u2019s call for the state to pony up more money for childcare programs<\/a> in the Big Apple \u2014 and laid out a series of suggestions for how he could make the system as a whole more effective.<\/p>\n

The Council, under the leadership of outgoing Speaker Adrienne Adams, unveiled its reasoning in a 14-page report that could also serve as a roadmap for Mamdani next year as he seeks to make good on his campaign promise to usher in free childcare<\/a> for all city kids between the ages of six weeks and 5.<\/p>\n

Currently, only families of 3 and 4-year-olds qualify for universal childcare programs<\/a> in the city, and Mamdani\u2019s campaign says the expansion he envisions would cost an additional $6 billion every year.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has said the state should provide that funding, specifically by increasing taxes on millionaires and corporations in the city \u2014 a proposal that\u2019s already running into headwinds in Albany.<\/p>\n

In its new report, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News ahead of its release, the Council sided with Mamdani\u2019s demand for more state childcare cash, but stopped short of saying the money should be raised through tax hikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo provide the city\u2019s families with expanded access to affordable early childhood education, the state budget must commit far greater funding support, whether through budget and\/or tax policy changes enacted by the governor and state legislature,\u201d says the report.<\/p>\n

The document doesn\u2019t specify a figure for how much more money the state should provide, but a Council official told The News the speaker agrees with Mamdani that it should be in the \u201cbillions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speaker, who ran against Mamdani in June\u2019s Democratic mayoral primary, is leaving office at the end of the year due to term limits.<\/p>\n

But the leading candidates<\/a> running to succeed her as speaker, Brooklyn Councilwoman Crystal Hudson and Manhattan Councilwoman Julie Menin, are also largely supportive of Mamdani\u2019s push for universal childcare and could be key in helping him convince Albany to act next year.<\/p>\n

Besides echoing Mamdani\u2019s demand for more state funding, the new Council report says his administration must immediately get to work on reforming the ways in which the city contracts with private providers who administer the childcare programs.<\/p>\n

The main contract for the Department of Education\u2019s childcare programs is set to expire in July 2026. The Council report says that \u201cpresents a pivotal opportunity\u201d for the incoming Mamdani administration to have the new contract remove kinks in the existing system.<\/p>\n

Opportunities and obstacles<\/p>\n

For instance, the report says the new contract should standardize a way to provide free \u201cextended day\u201d childcare seats for low-income families. Such seats provide childcare for up to 10 hours per day, year-around \u2014 above the traditional 6 hours and 20 minutes per day, 10 months per year currently subsidized by the universal 3K and pre-K programs.<\/p>\n

Low-income families, in particular, are often in need of keeping their children at daycares for longer hours. The Council report says that can be accomplished by creating \u201ca sliding scale\u201d under which families earning more would pay \u201cmodest\u201d fees for extended day seats<\/a> in order to make sure those on the lower end of the income ladder can get theirs fully subsidized, a system that wouldn\u2019t be totally free for everyone.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News<\/p>\n

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. (Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The Council report also says the new contract should increase the number of seats for children with disabilities, ensure parents can apply for seats on site at a daycare as opposed to only doing it via an online portal and standardize wages for all city-contracted childcare workers. The wage proposal would likely result in higher overall costs.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the document says the new contract should \u201cstreamline overlapping or contradictory procedures\u201d that currently exist because of the childcare enrollment process involving a number of different agencies beyond the Department of Education, including the Administration for Children\u2019s Services. The report doesn\u2019t specify exactly how such streamlining would be done.<\/p>\n

A Mamdani spokeswoman didn\u2019t immediately return a request for comment on the Council report.<\/p>\n

Once he\u2019s sworn in Jan. 1, Mamdani, 34, will face serious obstacles in how to secure the childcare funding he\u2019s seeking.<\/p>\n

Gov. Hochul, whose support will all but certainly be required to unlock more state funding, has said she\u2019s against raising taxes on the rich next year, while President Trump has threatened to cut various federal funding for the city once Mamdani\u2019s mayor.<\/p>\n

The Democratic leaders of both legislative chambers in Albany, though, are on board with Mamdani\u2019s tax-the-rich proposal, putting pressure on Hochul, especially with the Council also lining up with the mayor-elect.<\/p>\n

Hochul has said she supports Mamdani\u2019s overall push to make free childcare more accessible, potentially by tapping a different funding stream.<\/p>\n

It remains unclear what that funding stream might be, but Hochul has not directly shot down Mamdani\u2019s proposal to increase corporate taxes. The governor also met with Mamdani on Thursday afternoon and discussed their \u201cshared desire to make significant additional investments that put New York on a path to universal child care,\u201d according to a readout provided by the mayor-elect\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey committed to ongoing conversations at the senior staff level in the coming weeks to further develop a policy for FY 2027 and beyond,\u201d the readout added.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, while touring a childcare center in Brooklyn\u2019s Crown Heights neighborhood, Mamdani told reporters the most important thing for him is to provide more childcare, not the method by which an expansion is funded.<\/p>\n

He also shied away from giving himself a firm deadline by which he needs to make meaningful progress on providing more childcare.<\/p>\n

\u201cI view the time that I will be the mayor as the time that we have to implement the policies that we ran on,\u201d said Mamdani, whose first term as mayor ends 2030. If he\u2019s reelected to a second term, he can serve until 2035.<\/p>\n

With Cayla Bamberger\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City Council on Thursday endorsed Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani\u2019s call for the state to pony up more money…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[446,3208,301,302,9,24,56,63,65,64,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-38944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-adrienne-adams","9":"tag-childcare","10":"tag-city-council","11":"tag-city-hall","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-nyc-headlines","17":"tag-nyc-news","18":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38944","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=38944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}