There gotta be a lot of accounting magics working here. Otherwise you can't explain why they simply don't sell everything and buy bonds. I don't have a theory so hopefully some finance people can explain.
Error 1: "Something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done." Yeah, but "this" is something stupid, with no real-world chance of working.
Error 2: "We will not do anything until we can prove that it will work." You can analyze things to death and waste years in the process, and never do anything.
Somewhere in between is the right answer. You see plausible success, but still far from certain. Then you experiment.
Now, is New York striking the right balance? I have no idea. I'm not privy to their internal discussions. But I know that, if it fails, everyone is going to mock them for trying. That is, everyone is going to assume they fell into error 1. But did they? Getting the balance right still means that the experiments fail a fair amount of the time.
I honestly don't understand the desire for municipal grocery stores at all. Grocery stores famously operate on super slim margins, so it's not like they're raking in the dough. Many of them are often run extremely well. In Texas, HEB is so beloved that a lot of people consider it far better at disaster recovery operations than the actual government.
I'm not against plans to better help people afford groceries, but somebody needs to at least explain how the plan is economically rationally viable, not just "let's try something new!"