Posted by Leonard Steinberg on October 24th, 2013

I went to a fundraiser for New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio last night in a very fancy Upper East Side townhouse full of (mostly)Republican real estate big-wigs….wow, what a crowd! Hearing de Blasio speak was heartening in some ways as he seems to geniuniely care about New York and all its people. Most importantly, he stressed his commitment to maintain a low crime rate, with the intent of lowering it even further.

I spoke to him after his speech about the real estate tax mess in New York (the disparity in real estate taxes in our City and State are painfully unfair) and surprisingly he agreed with everthing I had to say and PROMISED to address this issue, but not in the first 100 days of office.

He also said he would be the kind of mayor who would be happy to admit being wrong if a policy was failing and change course if necessary. He reminded everyone in the room that he wanted more tax dollars from them, the very rich, which I thought was courageous: Now, if he were to look at the real estate tax issue in the first 100 days, and tax everyone fairly, he may not need to raise tax rates at all.