Last week, I went back to Bayside High School in Queens to deliver the Fiscal Year 2026 Executive Budget — the Best Budget Ever — in the same place I attended high school. My message was simple: this budget is not some abstract set of numbers; it is a statement about what we value and how we are investing in the people of New York City — keeping them safe, making the five boroughs more affordable, protecting quality of life, and making sure this is the best place to raise a family.
The decisions we made in this budget were guided by my own lived experience, and the struggles I saw my mother go through. She worked three jobs just to put food on the table for me and my siblings — and she could have used a helping hand. Put simply, our city once betrayed working people but we have not allowed that to continue under our administration. So this is the budget she needed, and one million of other working-class people across this city need today. It makes real investments in the areas working-class families care about most, including child care, ‘After-School for All,’ health care, education, public safety, affordability, quality of life, and so much more. It is not a budget that favors the few, it is a budget for all New Yorkers.
In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that our Fiscal Year 2026 Executive Budget is the Best Budget Ever — one that adds $1.4 billion next fiscal year to protect critical programs that were facing spending cliffs and will support all New Yorkers — no matter their means or background. And about $675 million of those programs are baselined — meaning that they are a permanent part of our city’s budget going forward, year after year, forever. This commitment means more security and stability for our city, especially when it comes to areas like public safety, housing, and our children’s education.
From prioritizing access to child care and launching universal after-school programming to investing in permanent funding for libraries, CUNY, and public-safety and quality-of-life initiatives, this budget will protect and expand critical programs that will improve the lives of New York families. We are hiring more teachers, reducing class sizes, and investing in arts education for our students. Our new funding will also support computer science education, tutoring, teacher recruitment, Civics for All, and more. And the best part? These programs are all baselined. They will be there for you and your children in the future, even if those children are still just chasing pigeons on the playground.
Our Fiscal Year 2026 Executive Budget also looks out for the New Yorkers who need our help the most and protects services that strengthen our communities. By carefully managing our city’s finances, we have been able to add nearly $840 million this coming fiscal year alone to protect services that were facing budget cliffs — these include Medicaid, rental assistance, foster care services, social services for seniors, New York City’s cash assistance contribution, and shelters for victims of domestic violence.
This budget additionally locks in support for the housing programs and affordability initiatives that New Yorkers need. We are funding creation of our “Manhattan Plan” to rezone parts of the borough and unlock an additional 100,000 homes for New Yorkers over the next decade. We are also investing in our city’s 15/15 Supportive Housing Initiative that will create and preserve over 5,800 supportive homes and provide vulnerable New Yorkers with a place to call their own, as well as provide them with access to the social services that build on our work tackling homelessness and severe mental illness.
All of this builds on the unparalleled record we have achieved on housing, and our landmark “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” plan, which will create 80,000 new homes over the next 15 years. We are also investing more than ever in improving our infrastructure at $173 billion that will deliver on generational projects that were talked about for decades but never achieved until we came into office. This includes improving our roads, bridges, schools, and water and sewer facilities, as well as supporting more reliable transportation systems across the five boroughs.
But all of these big plans and dreams are only possible if New Yorkers are safe and feel safe. Public safety is the foundation on which our city is built, and we are proud New York remains the safest big city in America. Major crime was down by double digits over the first quarter of this year, and we are tackling quality-of-life issues with a new 1,500-member division within the NYPD created solely for that purpose. This budget helps keep our streets and subways safe and making sure we have enough men and woman to get the job done as we put the NYPD on track to 35,000 uniformed officers by next fall.
We know New Yorkers work hard for their money and that’s why we have remained focused on saving taxpayer dollars. Our policies also have set the table for a strong local economy. This, along with growth in the national economy, has enabled us to revise our tax revenue forecast upward and balance the budget without cutting programs or services, raising taxes on New Yorkers by a single penny, or laying off hard-working city employees.
This budget is a testament to our commitment to making New York City safer, more affordable, and the best place to live and raise a family. We are doing all of this while maintaining record-high reserves to help us face anything that comes our way. 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.
