By the Numbers: What São Paulo's City Council Actually Approved This Month

São Paulo's Câmara Municipal passed 14 separate legislative measures in the first three days of July alone, including a R$2.3 billion supplementary credit package that authorises the Nunes administration to redirect funds toward drainage infrastructure across the city's chronically flooded zones in the Zona Leste and Zona Norte. The vote on July 2nd was 37 in favour, 8 against.

The timing is not incidental. The city recorded 47 flood-related deaths between January and June of this year, according to figures from the Defesa Civil do Estado de São Paulo, making 2026 the deadliest flooding year since 2010. With the winter rain cycle now pausing briefly, the window to move money and sign contracts before the next wet season is narrow. Municipal engineers privately estimate that 60 percent of the critical drainage upgrades in the Aricanduva basin alone remain unfunded even after the new credit injection.

Where the Money Goes — and Where It Doesn't

Of the R$2.3 billion approved, approximately R$890 million is earmarked specifically for the Programa Drenagem Inteligente, a joint city-state initiative that began in 2023 and has, by its own published metrics, completed work on just 12 of a planned 34 retention basins. The largest functioning basin, near the Parque Ecológico do Tietê in Itaquera, handles roughly 1.8 million cubic metres of water during peak events. The city says the programme needs to triple that total capacity by December 2027 to meet the targets set under the Plano Diretor Estratégico revised last year.

Meanwhile, R$440 million from the same package will go toward pavement and micro-drainage repairs in 32 subprefeituras — every one of the city's administrative districts. Critics in the council chamber, including members of the PSOL and Solidariedade benches, argued during Tuesday's session that distributing funds so thinly across all districts is a political calculation, not an engineering one, and that concentrating resources in the five highest-risk catchment areas would save more lives per real spent. The council's own Comissão de Política Urbana had flagged that concern in a May 2026 technical report that received little public attention at the time.

A separate bill, approved 41-4 on July 1st, updates the city's IPTU progressive rate schedule for commercial properties on Avenida Paulista and in the Faria Lima corridor. Properties sitting vacant for more than two consecutive years will now face a surcharge of up to 15 percent above the base rate — a rule that technically existed before but carried no enforcement mechanism. The Secretaria Municipal de Finanças estimates the measure could generate an additional R$180 million annually if applied to the roughly 340 commercially zoned properties currently classified as underutilised in those two corridors.

The Political Arithmetic Behind the Votes

Mayor Ricardo Nunes faces a city council that has grown more fractious since the November 2024 elections added eight new members from smaller parties. His coalition nominally controls 33 of 55 seats, but the drainage package required horse-trading that included commitments to fund a new Unidade Básica de Saúde in Brasilândia, in the far Zona Norte, and to accelerate the Operação Urbana Consorciada Bairros do Tamanduateí, a long-delayed urban renewal zone spanning parts of Santo André's border with the São Paulo municipal limits.

The Tamanduateí operation, if fully activated, represents a potential R$14 billion in private investment leverage over 15 years, though similar projections for the Operação Água Branca have historically come in at roughly half the projected figure.

Residents in flood-prone neighbourhoods like Jardim Romano and Vila Curuçá should watch for the Subprefeitura Itaquera's public consultation schedule, expected to be published on the city's SP156 portal by July 15th, which will detail which local drainage contracts are going to bid. That's when the numbers on paper will start to meet the mud on the ground.