Mamdani must reform New York Citys property-tax system its an avalanche of inequity

I’ve always found it morbidly fascinating there’s a scattering of deceased mountain climbers strewn out along the way up to Mount Everest’s summit.Their frozen corpses, shrouded in bright overpriced all-weather gear, politely remind those coming after them that continuing to the peak may not be their wisest decision.Granted I’m in no shape to climb Murray Hill, never mind Everest, but this does remind me of the body count of politicians lining the trail who’ve tried to reform New York City’s backward property-tax formula, which charges wealthy homeowners in posh ZIP codes a lower effective rate than those living in middle-class neighborhoods.No doubt Mayor Mamdani also noticed none has yet summited that mountain after his deputy mayor committed to taking up the cause.Look! There’s Bill de Blasio, frozen alongside his 2021 property-tax commission.

Watch your step over Eric Adams, whose flashy jacket wasn’t fire enough to get a reform bill through the Legislature.And over there, it’s Brad Lander, Justin Brannan and even me, the former Republican leader, hitched in tandem along an awkward bipartisan rope, and yet still couldn’t avoid the deep slide into the crevasse of impotence.Welcome to base camp, Zohran Mamdani.

Godspeed. Bon voyage to him and his sherpa, Dean Fuleihan, long a load-bearer of political baggage and eerily familiar with the fickle weather on Mount Albany, where his knowledge of how those bodies got there will prove useful.I genuinely wish them luck, as should all New Yorkers.The property-tax formula has buried our city in an inequitable avalanche of injustice, in which wealthy property owners benefit from a regressive system that rewards them for living in trendy neighborhoods with transit access and successful schools and punishes the working class in the outer-borough banlieue, where they pay more for less.This system has been passed down like a ghost story by generations of city and state politicians who can’t even recall ...