Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s universal childcare plan will cost 50% more than he advertised, according to a new study.
The proposed program is estimated to cost a whopping $9 billion annually, approximately with an average cost per child roughly $27,000, according to the report from the Center for New York City Affairs, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with the New School.
“An estimated $8.7 to $9.3 billion would be needed annually to fund universal child care in New York City,” the report, which was released on Monday, states.
That’s $3 billion more than the mayor previously said his ambitious universal free childcare program would cost.
Hizzoner promised on the campaign trail that his plan to make childcare free for children from 6 weeks old to five years old regardless of family income would cost about $6 billion per year and be paid for by taxing the state’s wealthiest earners.
The $3 billion gap identified in the study was largely tied to teacher pay, with the Center for NYC Affairs estimating some 23,000 new childcare workers will need to be hired, mainly for infants and children under three years old.
The city also needs to create about 10,000 new seats for children younger than pre-K, the researchers projected.
The report also noted that the city, in the 2025 fiscal year, budgeted $2.5 billion and ended up spending $3.8 billion on childcare services. --->READ MORE HERE
How much? Who cares!
Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday shrugged off a shocking study that found his free childcare plan will cost taxpayers billions more than anticipated — as he and Gov. Kathy Hochul touted the popularity of their 2-K pilot program.
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 launching this fall in select neighborhoods.
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 — as Mamdani has promised — would cost $9 billion annually.
That’s 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.
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’s go-to piggy bank thus far.
Asked about the study, Hizzoner touted the “partnership” with Hochul, reminiscing about the governor 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.
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.
“And 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’s 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,” he said. --->READ MORE HERE
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