Weather
79°68°
Chance Showers And Thunderstorms
52% chance of rain
Chance Showers And Thunderstorms
52% chance of rain
In the Bronx, Woodlawn-bound [4] skips Burnside Av
In Queens, Flushing-bound [7] skips 52 St and 69 St All trains at Woodside-61 St board from the Manhattan-bound platform
Braves62-440
Mets45-620
Yankees61-463
White Sox55-512Braves62-44Mets45-62Braves62-44Mets45-62Yankees61-46White Sox55-51
Liberty16-12113
Sparks10-17109| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | T | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NY | 36 | 17 | 32 | 28 | 113 |
| LA | 30 | 26 | 28 | 25 | 109 |
New York's new tax on the rich mailed itself to the wrong doorsteps.
Mayor Mamdani's Department of Finance mailed tens of thousands of longtime homeowners letters warning they could owe the city's new pied-à-terre tax, after publishing a property list that The City Reporter found topped 900,000 addresses, including finance commissioner Richard Lee's own Flushing home and former Mayor Bill de Blasio's Park Slope rowhouse [19]. The tax targets non-primary residences worth $5 million or more, charging up to 6.5% of a condo's value, and gives owners until Aug. 21 to prove they actually live there or pay [19]. Gov. Hochul, who agreed to the tax as part of this year's state budget, defended the mass mailing as "not out of the ordinary" [3].
“This sloppiness is probably going to end up hurting people the most.”
“This is really ridiculous because there's no home in this condo that meets the million-dollar threshold, let alone the $5 million threshold.”
“They have to fill out paperwork and call lawyers and pay them to get help with old documents.”
Politics | Spectrum News NY1The mayor who campaigned against austerity just ordered another round of it.
Mayor Mamdani directed every city agency to find another 2.5% in savings for fiscal years 2027 and 2028, on top of $1.77 billion already identified this year, as Comptroller Mark Levine projects a budget gap of at least $6 billion next year [18]. The push runs through agency "chief savings officers" and a new voluntary survey asking city workers where to cut, following an earlier 1.5% savings order in January [5][18]. City Hall says layoffs aren't on the table, though it hasn't said which agencies, if any, are exempt [18].
“The shell game has to end.”
“The City's budget gaps are large and growing.”
“Launching a savings program now, early in the fiscal year, is the right thing to do.”
The bacteria may be gone, but the toll keeps climbing.
A sixth person has died in the Upper East Side Legionnaires' outbreak, which has sickened 89 people and hospitalized 71 since the city identified the first cases July 2 [81]. Health officials say no new cases have been diagnosed since July 17 and believe the source, likely a single cooling tower, has been eliminated, even though 56 buildings in the outbreak zone, including the Guggenheim and a Marriott hotel, tested positive for live Legionella bacteria [75][81]. Council Speaker Julie Menin says the Health Department was slow to respond and has scheduled an oversight hearing for September [88].
“We extend our heartfelt condolences to their loved ones, and our thoughts are with them during this difficult time.”
“Hard, long — it was very difficult.”
“Remediation and enforcement strategies likely stopped the bacteria from spreading early and were critical to keeping more people from getting sick.”
Gothamist
Over the weekend, the giant red shopping-bag sign that has wrapped Macy's Herald Square since the 1960s came down, and passersby got their first look in decades at the five-story "holdout" building the department store built around rather than buy, after a rival retailer snatched up the plot in 1901 [90][98]. "It's kind of like a little snaggletooth in a big urban development," said Lilly Tuttle, senior curator at the Museum of the City of New York, calling it "one of the most iconic and notable examples" of the holdout buildings tucked throughout the five boroughs [98]. New LED signs go up soon, but for a few days, one of the city's oldest real-estate grudges was hiding in plain sight for anyone who looked up.