{"id":178577,"date":"2026-08-05T08:23:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T08:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/178577\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T08:23:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T08:23:24","slug":"mamdani-shrugs-off-ballooning-cost-of-nyc-free-childcare-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/178577\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani shrugs off ballooning cost of NYC free childcare plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

How much? Who cares! <\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday shrugged off a shocking study that found his free childcare plan<\/a> will cost taxpayers billions more than anticipated \u2014 as he and Gov. Kathy Hochul touted the popularity of their 2-K pilot program.<\/p>\n

Mamdani and Hochul announced that offers had been made to fill the 2,000 available seats, out of more than 7,500 families who applied for the first-of-its-kind free preschool program for 2-year-olds<\/a> launching this fall in select neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

\"NYCMayor Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul touted the 2-K pilot program, the inaugural iteration of universal childcare for 2,000 kids in the city. Robert Miller for NY Post<\/p>\n

But the joint press conference, at BedRock Preschool in The Bronx, came a day after the nonpartisan Center for New York City Affairs found that growing universal childcare to cover all city kids from 6 weeks old to five years old \u2014 as Mamdani has promised \u2014 would cost $9 billion annually.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a far cry from the $6 billion Mamdani advertised for the initiative, according to the study, which said ramping up free childcare would require adding some 10,000 seats and hiring some 23,000 workers.<\/p>\n

Neither Mamdani nor Hochul seemed particularly concerned with the reported cost overrun, nor with explaining how the massive gap would be closed other than levying additional taxes on the wealthy, the mayoral administration\u2019s go-to piggy bank thus far.<\/p>\n

Asked about the study, Hizzoner touted the \u201cpartnership\u201d with Hochul, reminiscing about the governor<\/a> allocating an extra $1.2 billion in state funding to fuel the 2-K pilot and build up existing free pre-K and 3-K programs.<\/p>\n

After recapping the particulars of the initiatives and sharing a word-salad anecdote about parents being forced to travel miles from their home to find childcare, Mamdani finally offered an oblique answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what I mean by that is that today we have families across the city spending, as the governor said, between 20 to $40,000 a year to raise their child in the nation\u2019s most expensive city. And this is an initiative that we are working on not just for the short term, for the medium term, but the long term to make it easier to raise that family here in New York City,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hochul, meanwhile, downplayed the report, pledging an \u201cindependent verification\u201d would be performed to determine the actual costs required, and dismissing the \u201coutside study\u201d as \u201cnot how we operate.\u201d<\/p>\n

After acknowledging she didn\u2019t know the total cost of Mamdani\u2019s universal childcare proposal, Hochul gushed that she was \u201cexcited\u201d about the growth of the 2-K program in its early days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just the beginning,\u201d she said \u2014 even as she admitted the state was only committed to helping the city foot the bill for 2-K through 2027, when the pilot will grow to 12,000 seats at a cost of $425 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked if the city was partnering with the state on the independent cost analysis mentioned by Hochul, Mamdani again bobbed and weaved his way through a response.<\/p>\n

\"NYSHochul said she was \u201cexcited\u201d about the growth of the program, despite not yet knowing if the cost will bust the budget Mamdani advertised by $3 billion, as a new report suggests. Robert Miller for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, as you heard from the governor, it\u2019s only right that we do an independent analysis and ensure we commit our full capacity to assessing the cost and scaling,\u201d he said. \u201cI will tell you that our focus right now is on delivering this free childcare to families of 2-year-olds across our city. We\u2019re excited that in just a short time, families will start benefiting from this. It\u2019s going to scale up to 12,000 seats, and we\u2019re going to continue doing the work to ensure it expands so every family can access free childcare for 2-year-olds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani and Hochul said each free 2-K seat, offered across five mostly lower-income and diverse neighborhoods, would save families an average of $26,000.<\/p>\n

The city forked over $73 million for the pilot working out to a whopping $36,500 per child \u2014 roughly $13,000 more than the average cost of private childcare, city officials have acknowledged.<\/p>\n

Among the families who received an initial offer, 99% of all offers were to a program listed on the family\u2019s application; 82% were matched with one of their top three choices; and more than half got their first choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How much? Who cares! Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday shrugged off a shocking study that found his free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[148],"tags":[3912,2372,2987,3913,543,869,48,553],"class_list":["post-178577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zohran-mamdani","tag-albany","tag-childcare","tag-funding","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-metro","tag-socialism","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117041942136874181","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}