De Blasio: No property tax increase

But tax assessments set to jump 8% in July

Bill de Blasio
Bill de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio will not recommend an increase to New York City’s property tax rate in next week’s 2015 fiscal budget proposal, making good on a campaign promise he made last year.

“We have no plans for a property tax increase,” de Blasio told reporters outside City Hall yesterday. Preliminary Department of Finance figures released last month, however, indicate that tax assessments are slated to rise by 8 percent in July, exceeding the city’s projections and representing the largest jump in tax assessments since June 2008.

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During his remarks Tuesday, de Blasio also highlighted the fiscal challenges facing the new administration, most notably the renegotiation of contracts for all city employees, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The open labor contracts create “tremendous fiscal uncertainty, and we don’t know even the timeline on which they will be settled,” he said, according to the newspaper. [WSJ]Hiten Samtani