While the state budget deadline has been extended to Monday, April 15, sources told NY1 that a deal in Albany could come even sooner.

Lawmakers have been struggling to come up with a deal that would create more housing, but there are many other issues on the table that have received little attention.

Mayor Eric Adams wants more power to borrow money that would go towards investment in city jails, roads, schools and housing.

“You can think of it like a mortgage for a homeowner. You’ve got your regular budget you use for food and clothing, that’s the city’s operating budget. We’re paying our teachers and cops and firefighters. But for things that have long-term value, like buildings and infrastructure — you borrow,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said.

Right now, New York City is allowed to take on billions of dollars in debt in order to plan ahead and budget for big projects.

“Just like with a household’s debt, you’ve got to worry about: how much am I paying every month? What’s my debt service? I don’t want to be paying so much every month that I can’t afford my other expenses, and you need to know overall, how much debt do I have? And the debt limit is that number,” Lander said.

The city is already planning projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but there’s a limit. City Hall argued there’s more they need to budget for.

“When we came into office, we had a clear mission: protect public safety, rebuild our economy and make our city more livable for everyday New Yorkers,” said Fabien Levy, deputy mayor of communications, in a statement.

“To further that mission, the city must be able to borrow critically needed funding to support our significant infrastructure needs. If the city runs out of room to borrow, that limits our ability to build new schools, maintain our roads and electrify our buildings amid the climate crisis. We are calling on Albany to do the right thing and increase the Transitional Finance Authority’s borrowing power to $36 billion to build a safer, cleaner New York City.”

Hochul and the legislature support a compromise. But skeptics argue the city must provide more details.

“We can’t get a clear answer from the city. They want to borrow a ton of money. Our simple question is for what?” Queens Democratic State Sen. John Liu asked. “It’s a substantial amount of additional borrowing and therefore debt that future taxpayers are going to be on the hook for.”

Fiscal experts said the city must give more details about plans for:

• The construction of borough-based jails intended to replace Rikers Island
• Replacing the Brooklyn Queens Expressway
• Complying with a lower class size mandate

“They have not added those projects to the capital plan so we don’t have precise timing, precise dollar estimates,” Ana Champeny, vice president of research at the Citizens Budget Commission, said.

Although Lander agrees the limit should be raised, he also thinks the city needs to focus on keeping projects on time — and close to budget estimates.

“Unfortunately, more than half of the city’s projects go over time or budget, so you can pick whether my first capital project when I was a councilmember was a dog run that was supposed to cost $200,000 and it cost $500,000 and it took five years instead of two years,” Lander said.

Additional details are expected to be included in the final budget package.