Day: May 1, 2025

Mayor Eric Adams is expected to unveil his $115 billion Executive Budget for the coming fiscal year on Thursday. The plan is flush with new spending as he faces a steep uphill re-election battle this year, amNewYork has learned.

Hizzoner is set to roll out his balanced Fiscal Year 2026 executive budget, some details of which his office shared with amNewYork Metro ahead of its May 1 release, during a noon press conference at his alma mater of Bayside High School in Queens.

The mayor’s spending plan is up roughly $600 million from his $114.5 billion preliminary budget released in January and $3 billion from the Fiscal Year 2025 budget enacted last June.

Adams has been framing the fiscal blueprint as his “best budget ever,” one that will help working-class New Yorkers like his late mother, Dorothy Mae Adams-Streeter. 

“This budget is a testament to our commitment to making New York City safer, more affordable, and the best place to raise a family,” Adams said in a statement, repeating a line he debuted in his State of the City address in January. “This is the budget my mom needed, that my family needed, and, with it, we’re saying to working families: Your city has your back.”

With the release of Adams’ executive budget, negotiations will begin in earnest between his office and the City Council over the final shape of the spending plan, which must be passed by a July 1 deadline. The two sides of City Hall have had hard-fought battles over the budget in years past, a dynamic that could be exacerbated by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ bid to unseat Mayor Adams, to whom she is not related, in this year’s election.

In a departure from Adams’ past budget announcements, many of which were marked by his wide-ranging cuts aimed at offsetting the city’s massive spending on migrants, he has made his re-election-year budget rollout a celebratory affair.

The mayor’s rosiest budget presentation to date comes as he makes a long-shot bid for a second term in the November general election, after opting out of the Democratic primary and deciding to run as an independent. He is seeking to show New Yorkers why they should give him another four years in City Hall amid record-low job approval rating numbers and in the aftermath of his now-dismissed federal indictment.

Before releasing the full budget on Thursday, Adams made separate announcements in which he touted its investments in supportive housing and tenant protection programs, the addition of free after-school seats in a new push to make the initiative universal, and the boosting of NYPD headcount to 35,000 by next fall.

According to City Hall, the plan also commits $199 million in recurring funding—known as baselining—for education programs that were previously supported by now-expired COVID-19 stimulus dollars. The funding will go towards arts education in schools, teacher recruitment, and a mentorship program called “Project Pivot,“ among other areas.

Furthermore, the budget allocates $1.4 billion to safeguard programs that were not funded in the upcoming fiscal year, according to the mayor’s office, including over $675 million in new recurring spending. Those areas include savings for CUNY, continuing the current level of litter basket collection, and increasing funding for cultural institutions.

The budget also restores dollars to areas where Adams previously made cuts and baselines the funding going forward, according to Adams’ office. Those include $167 million for the city’s 3-K and universal Pre-K programs and $112 million in funding for senior centers and home-delivered meals.