Photo of New Yorkers drinking on St. Mark’s Place by Eden, Janine and Jim on Flickr

As part of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s state budget negotiations, restaurants will once again be able to add alcoholic drinks to delivery and takeout orders. To keep restaurants afloat at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, to-go cocktail, wine, and beer service was given the green light for 15 months. When public health precautions were scaled back, customers returned to the city’s eateries, and alcoholic drink delivery was 86’d. The law, which will take effect when the budget is passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor, will allow restaurants to offer to-go booze for the next three years, Gothamist reports.

Find out more

Mayor Eric Adams presents New York City’s $98.5 billion Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023. City Hall. Wednesday, February 16, 2022. Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office via Flickr.

Mayor Eric Adams released the city’s preliminary budget for fiscal year 2023 last Wednesday, placing emphasis on public safety, employment, and aiding the plight of the city’s youngest residents by addressing childcare and at-risk youth. While the mayor’s safety-focused policy actions–prohibiting homeless people from sleeping in subway stations, for example–made headlines, advocates for equitable housing and the homeless say the proposed budget is a disappointment without a previously promised focus on those basic needs.

More on where the money’s going, this way

220 Central Park South. Image via Vornado Realty Trust and Robert A.M. Stern Architects.

New York’s 2020 budget was revealed this weekend; among many other items, the proposed “pied-à-terre tax” went away, but a progressive “mansion tax,”–a one-time tax on properties valued from $1 million to $25 million or more–and an attendant transfer tax when those properties sell–will reportedly raise $365 million, according to The Real Deal. The money will head straight to the MTA. The new tax will top out at 4.15 percent.

A big tax on big ticket buys