Sunday, October 25, 2026
A $650 Million Bronx Rescue Collapsed. Mamdani's Answer Was to Blame Eric Adams.
The Hunts Point Produce Market is the kind of place officials love posing in front of: 26 businesses that, per city figures, supply a quarter of the city’s fresh produce, on more than 100 acres the city already owns. A $650 million plan to modernize it collapsed over the summer, and roughly $370 million in federal grants and loans is reportedly now in jeopardy. Mayor Zohran Mamdani says the framework simply “fell apart,” and he blames his predecessor, Eric Adams, for pushing it through before anyone resolved the concerns — his explanation, not an established fact, and one that leaves the missing federal money unaddressed. The market’s own cooperative disputes that rent was ever the real holdup; the city insists it was. Either way, the City Council now plans a hearing into how a project its own speaker called “mission critical” fell apart in this administration’s first year.
The takeaway — A Bronx market deal with federal money attached died on this mayor’s watch, and his public explanation was to point at the last administration. That’s not an economic development plan. That’s a press strategy. The Council’s hearing will tell us whether City Hall has anything else.
Nobody’s Paying the Bus Fare Anymore. The MTA’s Fix Was to Stop Checking.
Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor promising free buses. What riders got instead is nearly half of them skipping the fare anyway, free-bus pledge or not. On Thursday, MTA Chair Janno Lieber pulled the agency’s fare-enforcement teams off the street after video surfaced of inspectors confronting a Brooklyn school dean on a B14 bus. The mayor’s office praised the move. Fares are still $3 — the MTA, a state agency, sets them, not City Hall — but Lieber himself said back in August that “all the talk of free bus” does have an impact on how many people bother paying.
The takeaway — You can’t campaign on “free” and act surprised when people take you up on it before the policy ever passes. The MTA’s own chair just admitted the talk alone has consequences, and the agency’s answer wasn’t to collect the fare. It was to stop checking for it.
New York Still Won’t Let You Start a Street Fair. Blame the Overtime Budget.
New York has banned new street fair permits every year since 2004, and the Mamdani administration just extended the streak through 2027. The rule, published in the City Record, would let the city reject any application for a fair that didn’t take place in 2026 — only fairs that already ran this year keep their spot in line. The administration’s stated reason is money: the city comptroller projects NYPD overtime near $890 million this fiscal year, the third-highest total on record, and the city says more permits would pull officers from “core crime fighting.” Merchant associations and business improvement districts that actually want to run fairs say they’re the ones left outside; the extension isn’t official until a Nov. 24 hearing.
The takeaway — The people who want to run a street fair aren’t the ones who ran up the NYPD overtime budget. They’re just the easiest ones to say no to.