By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams on Friday announced an agreement on a $115.9 billion Adopted Budget for Fiscal Year 2026.
Highlights of the plan include the creation of “After-School for All,” a $755-million plan to deliver universal after-school programming to families of children in kindergarten through 8th grade; baselining funding for 3-K citywide expansion and special education pre-K to expand access to early childhood education; capital investments that include allocating $24.7 billion towards affordable housing through the city’s 10-Year Capital Plan. The budget is also the first to implement Mayor Adams’ “Axe the Tax for the Working Class” plan, which abolishes the City’s personal income tax for filers with dependents living at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty line.
Hizzoner has often called improving public safety his “North Star.” He said the Adopted Budget makes Gotham safer and improves quality of life by:
- Increasing funding for programs that provide free legal assistance to immigrants, including representation for those facing deportation and assistance with applications for various immigration benefits ($41.9 million).
- Funding to increase the operating support for the city’s Cultural Institutions Group and provide additional funding for Cultural Development Fund grants ($30 million).
- Funding to support people experiencing severe mental illness and the city’s most vulnerable by investing in programs that meet New Yorkers where they are, such as Intensive Mobile Treatment teams and Assertive Community Treatment to create a pilot step-down programs for clients who have progressed in their treatment and require less-intensive services, as well as expand operations at Crisis Respite Centers, which provide community-based support to individuals experiencing a mental health crisis ($18 million).
- Funding for pro-bono attorneys that assist unaccompanied minor immigrants in removal proceedings ($12.5 million).
- Providing the city’s district attorneys with funding provide operational support and additional staff to address gang, youth, and domestic violence, as well as improve forensic analysis to support legal proceedings ($12.1 million).
- Funding for the City Department of Parks and Recreation to hire more than 170 additional parks enforcement patrol officers, gardeners, and city park workers ($10.2 million).
- Creating the Department of Sustainable Delivery within the City Department of Transportation to regulate commercial e-bikes, including 60 positions for regulation and enforcement ($6.1 million at full ramp-up).
- Funding to help local Business Improvement Districts purchase sanitation bins with secure lids to assist in Mayor Adams’ Trash Revolution, the citywide effort to move trash from black bags on the sidewalk to rat-resistant, closed containers ($5 million).
- Supporting “Project Restore,” a community-based gang violence intervention program that addresses barriers to personal growth, including economic insecurity, disconnection from education and employment, a lack of role models, and unhealed trauma ($2 million).
- Funding to provide legal services for domestic violence survivors in divorce proceedings ($2 million).
- Adding staff at the City Department of Veterans’ Services with the addition of nine new staff members. The new positions will include benefits advisors, housing coordinators, outreach specialists, and burial support staff ($680,000).
- Funding to equip the City Department of Sanitation police officers in the Vending Enforcement Unit with body-worn camera equipment ($260,000).
Council Speaker Adams added that the Fiscal Year 2026 Adopted Budget “will invest in expanded childcare for working families, more seven-day library service, greater support for older adult services, maternal and mental health care, and proven public safety programs to reduce recidivism and help advance the closure of Rikers [Island].”
