NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Council Speaker Julie Menin take victory lap after budget deal. Here's what they got done.

After lengthy and hard-fought negotiations, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and members of the New York City Council reached a budget deal Tuesday just hours before the deadline.

It's an agreement that allows both sides to claim victory, including 30,000 more housing vouchers for New Yorkers, millions of dollars to investigate 9/11 toxins, and expanding transit discounts to 340,000 more people.

Mamdani shows off fiscal chops right out of the gate   

Mamdani wanted his first budget to be a victory for working people, but in some respects the City Council may have one-upped him, holding out until almost the 11th hour for priorities the mayor was hesitant to embrace.

But still, he got to bask in the fact that as a democratic socialist in the financial capital of the world, he got it done.

Mamdani and members of the council walked into the City Hall rotunda Tuesday from opposite sides of the building for a handshake to seal the deal on the $125.8 billion budget.

The deal gave the freshman mayor the opportunity to brag about his fiscal chops.

"I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek: 'If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists.' If these past months have shown us anything, it is that socialists not only understand economics, [they understand] just as well as the capitalists who came before," Mamdani said.

Gov. Hochul gave NYC a helping hand

The budget depended on the largess of Gov. Kathy Hochul to avoid new taxes on just about everybody except the owners of posh homes.  

Despite a gaping $12 billion budget hole, the mayor avoided major service cuts because Hochul came to the rescue with a massive bailout package -- an extra $4 billion in state aid, pension relief, and class size flexibility that saved more than $500 million.

The governor blocked the mayor's call to tax the rich, instead approving a pied-à-terre tax on second homes valued at more than $5 million.

City Council Speaker Julie Menin called the deal "a budget we can all be proud of."

Menin came out way ahead in this budget

Menin, also in her first term, scored some major victories, including:

• An expansion of the Fair Fare program, making an additional 340,000 New Yorkers eligible for half fares on buses and subways
• A 10-fold increase in college savings plans. Now every public school kindergartner will have a $1,000 college saving account, up from just $100
• $6 million for the Department of Investigation to complete a long-delayed probe on the release of cancerous toxins at Ground Zero

But probably the biggest City Council victory was forcing the mayor to relent on increasing the city FHEPS housing voucher program. As a result, an additional 30,000 New Yorkers will be able to avoid eviction. Menin said it was aimed at the affordability crisis.

"This crisis is not merely crushing the people of the city, but it is oftentimes pushing them entirely out of the city," Menin said. "So with a substantial investment to sensibly expand housing vouchers, we are helping to keep thousands more families in their homes and out of a shelter system."

Not everyone was happy with the budget deal. The mayor was slammed for apparently caving to his base with a last-minute reversal on hiring nearly 600 more police officers, and the Citizens Budget Commission said Mamdani failed to fix structural budget problems that will leave the city with big budget gaps in the future.