He suggested New Yorkers hunker down and read the bestselling hockey romance novel “Heated Rivalry.” He invited kids upset about a remote school day on Monday to throw a snow ball at him. And he helped drivers shovel their cars out of the snow in Brooklyn.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani handled his first snowstorm the same way he campaigned — by being highly visible, dropping cheeky humor and going viral.
The mayor appeared to have made it through one of the most high stakes tests of running City Hall with no major mistakes. At a press conference on Monday, Mamdani and city officials said that every street was plowed multiple times.
“New York was prepared and New York weathered the storm,” Mamdani said.
The early reviews from New Yorkers and city officials were mostly positive. But this being New York City, people still had complaints.
New Yorkers spent Monday trudging through knee-high drifts of snow in frigid temperatures. The city got as much as a foot of snow in some areas and icy streets and sidewalks could remain an issue throughout the rest of the week. And there were some neighborhoods where streets remained slushy.
Roads and sidewalks were a snowy mess Monday morning in much of the city.
“It’s been getting done,” said Denorval Parks, a 53-year-old resident in Fort Greene. “ Faster would've been better because New York is the city that never sleeps, and we're also a city that never stops.”
Pamela James, a 63-year-old resident at the Walt Whitman Houses, said the front of her building had not been shoveled as of Monday morning.
“ I could have fell,” she said as she headed to work. “This is really scary, you know?”
In some cases, city officials said they were still assessing what might have gone smoother. At least seven people were found dead outside during the snowstorm. The medical examiner is investigating each of the deaths.
Mamdani said more than 170 people had been moved to shelters over the weekend.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin said she had concerns about whether the city had responded swiftly enough to residents affected by a deadly Bronx fire.
“Some of them needed to evacuate,” she said, adding that the Red Cross and other city agencies had difficulty initially reaching families in need of food and shelter.
“The storm complicated that process,” she said. But overall, Menin said sanitation workers “did a tremendous job.”
Mayor Mamdani met with families affected a deadly fire in the Bronx.
On Monday, there were complaints from some parents about problems signing their children on for remote learning after the mayor decided to close schools. Around 400,000 public school students were online as of 9:15 a.m., according to city officials. That was out of 500,000 children who were required to switch to remote learning. High school students and some middle school students had a day off due to a previously scheduled “professional learning day” for teachers.
Mamdani, along with Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, joined one classroom for remote learning and a reading of the book “The Snowy Day.” Samuels, who logged on his own daughter, said the virtual school day was off to “a smooth start.” He said families should report any problems logging on by calling the Department of Education’s IT helpline at 718-935-5100.
In an interview on Sunday evening, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said he had only fielded complaints from drivers stuck on state-owned highways. Julia Kerson, the deputy mayor of operations, said the city had worked with state agencies to deploy tow trucks on highways.
Richards said Mamdani had done “an outstanding job” by being out in the streets and focusing on areas beyond Manhattan that have historically felt neglected during major snowstorms.
He said he had seen sanitation crews driving through his own block multiple times.
“I would give him an A,” Richards said, adding that he would have a “clearer assessment” later in the week.
He added: “This was the first test, and I think he understood the importance of this test.”
