Contracts Committee to grill the city on PASSPort as faster nonprofit grants roll out

The Council's Committee on Contracts holds an oversight hearing on PASSPort, the city's online procurement system, on Thursday, Oct. 29, at 2 p.m. (meeting page). It comes three weeks after Speaker Julie Menin and Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a faster way to pay small nonprofits that receive Council money.

The nonprofits that run after-school programs, senior centers and food pantries often wait months to be paid by the city. That gap shows up as delayed services and borrowed money.

What the city announced

According to the Council's Oct. 8 release, the city is expanding its Discretionary Grant Pilot to up to 800 community nonprofits. The pilot treats Council discretionary awards as grants rather than procurements and removes nine steps from the usual process. Eligible groups can get 100 percent of awards up to $25,000, counted cumulatively across mayoral agencies. In fiscal 2026, the pilot paid $1 million to more than 100 providers, who got their money in about three months on average rather than more than 12, the release said. Discretionary contracts make up nearly 70 percent of the human services contract backlog. Grant agreements are due out in November, with payments in late 2026 or early 2027.

Contracts chair Lincoln Restler called it a "common sense intervention to streamline City bureaucracy." Finance chair Linda Lee said it was about "cutting red tape," per the release.

What our records add

How the pilot has been described to the committee. At the committee's Jan. 27 hearing, Mayor's Office of Contract Services Director Kim Yu described the pilot as a new way of handling discretionary funding (video at 19:07). At the Feb. 25 hearing, Restler said many nonprofits are "struggling like hell on cash flow," citing late contracts and payments (2:01:01). On March 24, Yu told members the fiscal 2026 pilot had eliminated 13 steps for participating nonprofits (14:31). The October release counts nine steps removed for the expansion; the two figures may be measured differently. At the Oct. 8 stated meeting, Menin announced the expansion from the floor (19:30).

How many small awards there are. Our funding data shows Council members designated about $138.8 million in district-level expense funding for fiscal 2027 across 7,605 awards. The largest single initiative by count, Local Initiatives, has 2,573 designations totaling $36.5 million, an average of about $14,200. By district, totals range from about $1.1 million in District 16 to about $4.0 million in District 12. Citywide, the Council designated $654.9 million for fiscal 2027.

What else is on Thursday's agenda. Three bills on small capital projects: Int. 1064 and Int. 1065, from Carl Wilson, on approval timeframes and cost benchmarks; and Int. 991, from Chris Banks, for a catalog of standard designs. A resolution from Eric Dinowitz, Res. 619, asks Albany to lower the dollar threshold for design-build contracts.

The committee. Restler chairs; members are Gale A. Brewer, James F. Gennaro, Kamillah Hanks, Althea V. Stevens, Inna Vernikov and Julie Won.

What's next

Thursday's hearing is the committee's chance to ask how PASSPort is handling the grant expansion before agreements go out in November. Video and a searchable transcript will be posted on the meeting page.