Mamdani’s grocery-store specs show the idea is – Latest News
The specs for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s magical city-run grocery shops demand the moon, however consumers shall be fortunate to search out some overripe inexperienced cheese.
As with most metropolis contracting, the Economic Development Corp.’s official Request For Proposals outlines an implausible wish-list that may ship much less than half what Mamdani promised at more than twice the price.
The metropolis needs potential operators of the shops to submit particular financial plans for stocking, staffing and working 5 supermarkets — when the metropolis hasn’t constructed any of the 5, nor chosen places for 3.
These imaginary shops should be managed below a business plan out of Alice in Wonderland: No deli counter allowed, however they need to sell fruit, tuna, bean, chicken, egg and potato salads.
The operator ought to have a pre-existing “cost-effective” provide chain, but additionally source from “local suppliers and small businesses while keeping prices low.”
Staff must implement who can store: solely these with a “library card-esque” buyer ID card (which is nothing like a voter ID as a result of . . . properly, as a result of).
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The shops are eligible for a taxpayer-funded “Affordability Payment,” a subsidy to cowl the value of promoting objects for 30% beneath retail average, however management should have expertise with worker profit-sharing.
Huh? If the store’s funds are backstopped by the metropolis, there’s no “profit” to share.
Unless of course you’re a socialist taking part in “store” with Monopoly money, which is what this experiment seems a lot like.
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And EDC officers on Wednesday had been stumped by tons of different questions on the RFP.
None of this gibberish is information to anybody conversant in how the metropolis burns money on contractors yearly.
During the migrant disaster, it handed out billions in no-bid contracts to insiders who wasted, misplaced or stole huge sums of money.
The leaders of contractors who run main homeless shelter networks routinely pay themselves monumental salaries whereas additionally hiring firms they own as sub-contractors.
The Department of Education, which spends more than $13 billion on distributors yearly, is notoriously opaque about its processes, refusing to release particulars on a whole bunch of contracts. (No shock that Kamar Samuels had signed off on a sequence of odiferous funds earlier than rising to change into DOE chancellor.)
Mamdani’s grocery store RFP takes metropolis contracting to new heights of absurdity, however the method New York routinely does business is already insane.
