Speaker Menin on historic budget investments and CityFEPs settlement

This is a budget that secures the most ever capital and expense funding for the City Council in its history, while also demonstrating at the same time prudent fiscal responsibility.

I want to briefly highlight a few transformative investments that we are doing in this budget that meaningfully tackle the affordability crisis.

With a substantial investment to sensibly expand housing vouchers, we are helping to keep thousands of people in the city.

more families in their homes and out of shelters.

In addition to the investment, we reached a truly historic agreement on city FEPS with the administration.

And I just want to take a moment to talk about it.

They have agreed something we've asked for since January, and I particularly want to thank Councilmember Pierina Sanchez for her leadership on this.

Thank you so much.

So we were able to get the administration to drop the lawsuit against the council, which is something that we were insisting on since January, and at the same time

engage in a settlement where we will be voting today on a new bill sponsored by Councilmember Sanchez that will create a new cost-containing structure for housing vouchers so that we ensure that we are housing

vulnerable New Yorkers, but we're doing it in a way that is truly sustainable.

And that is historic.

We also held the line on this expansion of the vouchers, and I want to thank all the council members who joined in holding the line on that.