A Brooklyn restaurant with links to City Hall reportedly raked in $1.4 million since 2016 from the city’s Department of Education, with more than half doled out in fiscal year 2025 alone.
Amid the ongoing fight to occupy Gracie Mansion between incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D), socialist state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D), and disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), the Big Apple’s Comptroller’s Office flagged a series of invoices exceeding the permitted per-person amount. Closer scrutiny uncovered hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing into one Caribbean and soul food restaurant, with a majority of the funds being spent by one middle school.
According to a report from amNewYork, of over $745,000 in payments from the DOE approved in FY 2025 to the restaurant Fusion East, $618,000 was spent by the Brownsville Collaborative Middle School.
City Comptroller Brad Lander, a supporter of Mamdani’s mayoral bid, called into question oversight from City Hall after his office had initially been made aware of 13 consecutive invoices for events dated Aug. 28 through Sept. 6, 2024, amounting to just under $20,000.
The outlet reviewed a March 5 letter submitted to the DOE by Deputy Comptroller for Contracts and Procurement Charlette Hamamgian as the office went on to uncover department approval of over $81,000 in FY 2023 and over $470,000 in FY 2024 as part of $1.4 million paid to Fusion East since 2016.
In addition to being a U.S. Air Force veteran, certified public accountant, and corporate attorney, restaurant owner Andrew Walcott is also a member of the mayor’s Small Business Advisory Commission and Veterans Advisory Board, in addition to the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce executive board. He opened Fusion East midway through Adams’s first term as Brooklyn Borough president, but claimed in a comment to the New York Post, “There is no political connection. You earn it the old-fashioned way.”
He also explained to the outlet that a popular DOE order for school events, as well as staff and student lunches, was his $5 special that included protein and sides. “This is definitely one of the more popular items for schools. The $5 special. They order like two or three hundred of them at a time.”
“After they placed 13 orders for roughly $20,000 worth of orders, the principal stopped returning our calls. They stopped paying. It took about eight months to get paid,” added Walcott.
In response to concerns raised by the comptroller’s office, the DOE brought up the mayor’s Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise (M/WBE) Program and said the “increase in spend is aligned with the mayor’s citywide goal of increasing the utilization of MWBE suppliers for goods and services.”
Likewise, a statement from DOE Deputy Press Secretary Jenna Lyle to amNewYork expressed, “Financial responsibility is critical to the New York City Public Schools, and we worked closely with the Comptroller’s team to respond to these concerns.”
“We are the largest school district in the nation, and large purchase amounts are not uncommon in a system of over 1,600 schools and nearly one million students. No non-contracted procurement rules were violated, but we conducted our due diligence and took all necessary action here, including training this staff to avoid this issue in the future,” she went on.
Speaking on behalf of City Hall, a spokesperson told amNewYork that the government works “closely with the New York City Public Schools each and every day, and the results of our oversight of the schools speaks for itself — we are making historic progress in reading and math, expanding early childhood education programs, and reducing class sizes, just to name a few.”
“We work closely with our schools to maintain financial responsibility and a balanced budget, and they have addressed this situation appropriately,” added the representative while a statement from the comptroller’s spokesperson Sara Azcona-Miller argued, “When over half a million dollars of taxpayer money goes to a single restaurant, the lack of Mayoral oversight over City agencies like DOE is glaring.”
“The three-quarters of a million dollars wasted on unallowable catering could have made a huge difference for teachers and students who pay for school supplies out-of-pocket,” added Azcona-Miller.
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Author: Kevin Haggerty
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