Lee on World Cup host committee contract spending breakdown

It's a very different model.

And can you speak to the affordability of the products in the existing?

retail markets if there's any subsidy and how those are going to compare to the prices in the New York City grocery stores.

So how we operate the public markets is that we give discounted rent for the tenants, for the people who have their food markets in the public markets.

And that's how we support the small businesses and what they're doing.

We do not monitor their pricing.

We just provide

discounted rates, tenant rates for them.

So it sounds like those are more about creating jobs for small businesses and less about food security.

Exactly.

Well, it's also about bringing sort of those small businesses that are culturally relevant for the neighborhood.

In La Maqueta, you'll see a lot of different kinds of stalls there, and so it's important for the neighborhood, and it's like a nice gathering area.

Thank you.

So switching gears, I want to talk about the World Cup, since my colleague brought it up, and acknowledge a lot of the great work that's been done since our prior hearing.

I was on one of the ferries with the raft of the burros and loved that experience and the cultural map and a lot of the efforts to get small businesses included

in tourist activities while they're here.

And I did want to circle back on some of the questions we had about the contract with the host committee.

And my understanding from our prior hearings is this is a

on a reimbursement basis and EDC can see how those funds are being spent.

And at the time we didn't have a lot of details, so I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit more of a breakdown on how the 20 million is distributed to how it's being spent by the host committee

and then the additional 15 million that had been added in the 2027 preliminary plan.

Yeah, so the $20 million has already been spent, and that was for a lot of the planning, transportation, logistics, the sort of cultural and to plan for all the activity that's happening right now.

The $15 million is...

Being spent now and the scope of services there is really for these fan fests and these villages as well as for marketing like the dress the city just you'll see you know see so much going on

dressing the city for the world's cup and also for these for some community and cultural programming across the five boroughs

I also want to commend the administration for making it more affordable to go to the cup.

So the work to reduce the cost of NJ Transit and also including the bus service at a lower cost.

And part of that was securing 1,000 tickets at $50.

The news outlets say that this did not come at any cost to the taxpayers and was released directly from the host committee.

So I just wanted to get your comment on the record on that.

Yes, that's right.

That is not part of the $15 million that's coming through EDC.