If the new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, can solve New York City’s unfair property tax puzzle, a nonsensical crazy quilt of assessments and rates that puts an extra burden on the less well off, it would be a tremendous boost for his goal of affordability and could mean a lot more than a temporary freeze for rent-stabilized units.

We urge Mamdani to take up this monumental challenge, which has defeated mayors and everyone else for decades. Having Dean Fuleihan at his side as first deputy mayor shows he’s picked the exact right man.

Property taxes bring in around $37 billion a year, making them the largest single revenue source, but who pays how much has no rhyme or reason, with huge disparities among single family homes based on neighborhoods and pure kookiness in how condos and coops are taxed.

And as for renters, about 37% of what you pay each month to your landlord goes to property taxes, so it matters greatly to everyone who lives here, no matter if you own or rent.

Evening it out is only fair and will ease the cost of living for those who are struggling, which is what Mamdani says he wants to do.

In 2018, a reelected Mayor Bill de Blasio (with Fuleihan as his first deputy mayor) appointed the Advisory Commission on Property Tax Reform, chaired by Marc Shaw, who was once first deputy mayor himself.

The panel laid out 10 sound recommendations to overhaul a system that they said is “Opaque. Arcane. Inequitable.” But their final report, delayed by COVID, was published Dec. 29, 2021, hours before the end of de Blasio’s term. The next day, Dec. 30, de Blasio issued a proclamation honoring Fuleihan’s service to the city. And Dec. 31 was the farewell for de Blasio.

But Fuleihan is back in the same job on Jan. 1 and so is the property tax mess. Fuleihan knows the matter well and he also knows Shaw well. Shaw is chair of the advisory board at the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance, where Fuleihan a senior fellow.

Mamdani and Fuleihan must take the Shaw report off the shelf and put it into action. It’s nuts that nothing has happened with it.

There’s also a lawsuit against the property tax system that was started in 2017. In March 2024, the New York State Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, ruled that the case against the city can proceed. The plaintiff, Tax Equity Now NY, has asked the trial judge, Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Gerry Lebovits, for a summary judgment that the system violates the law related to residential property taxes that “all real property in each assessing unit shall be assessed at a uniform percentage of value (fractional assessment).”

A week before the mayoral election, on Oct. 28, the parties were in court arguing before Lebovits, who noted that “People have complained for years about the city’s property tax system. Republicans, Democrats, everyone on the spectrum of politics. Mayor after mayor has complained about it, candidate after candidate says that it’s not been working out.”

Lebovits is correct. And on Jan. 1 Mamdani becomes the defendant of a system that can’t be defended. Will he be one who can finally fix it?