Mamdanis NYPD cut blindsided City Council leaving pols bracing for other surprises in $126B budget they passed

Clueless City Council members were blindsided by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s 11th-hour move to ax nearly 600 promised new NYPD cops from the city’s behemoth budget – leaving them bracing for more surprises, sources revealed.Mamdani sprung the cut on City Council Speaker Julie Menin late Monday right after they hashed out a backroom deal for the eventual $125.8 billion budget, insiders told The Post.The ambushed lawmakers had taken Mamdani at his word weeks ago that he’d hire 580 more officers — even though that pledge angered the democratic socialist’s lefty allies because it broke a campaign promise to freeze the NYPD’s headcount at 35,000 cops.“We were completely blindsided when the mayor sucker-punched us with this reversal after a deal was done,” said David Carr (R-Staten Island), the City Council’s minority leader.“When an administration publicly announces that it is hiring 580 police officers, you’re supposed to be able to take them at their word.Not once from the announcement was there any sense that this needed expansion of the uniform headcount could be on the chopping block.”The far-left-appeasing move also put the City Council speaker in a bind because if she objected, it would have derailed a budget deal as the city was already in danger of blowing past a Wednesday deadline, insiders said.“It was completely deliberate,” one insider said.

“He did it at the last minute so the council couldn’t do anything.”Council members ultimately approved the record-breaking budget 45-6 late Tuesday without fully knowing what it contained, owing to the last-minute, ramshackle scramble to pull it together, insiders said.The council members — as well as New Yorkers in general — still didn’t fully know a day later what curveballs the adopted budget contained, as documents detailing the spending plan’s specifics still hadn’t been released.The wait prompted not-so-quiet grumbling from lawmakers such as Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Que...