All Sections Subscribe Log in

Thursday, November 16th 2023

57°F Daily News e-Edition
Evening e-Edition

E-Newspaper National News NYC Crime Politics Sports SNYDE Eats Photos Puzzles & Games Obits Transportation

Trending: Cardi B defends Will Smith Citigroup layoffs Diddy sued for rape, abuse Latin Grammys Red Carpet! Mayor’s major budget, service cuts

Latest Headlines
SUBSCRIBER ONLY

Mayor Adams’ revised $110B budget cuts sanitation, library, education and
migrant services, puts NYC on track to have less than 30K cops

Barry Williams for New York Daily News

Mayor Eric Adams is pictured during in-person media availability in city hall Tuesday, Nov. 14, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams for New York Daily News)

By Chris Sommerfeldt | csommerfeldt@nydailynews.com | New York Daily News

PUBLISHED: November 16, 2023 at 12:13 p.m. | UPDATED: November 16, 2023 at 6:26 p.m.

Most of New York City’s public libraries won’t stay open on Sundays anymore. The city’s universal pre-
program is getting curtailed. There will be fewer sidewalk trash bins and less street cleaning across
the five boroughs. Various services for newly arrived migrants will be phased out, and the NYPD is on
track to have less than 30,000 cops for the first time in decades.

Those are just some of the results of drastic spending cuts contained in Mayor Adams’ November
budget modification released Thursday for the 2024 fiscal year, which runs through June 30.

In a written statement, Adams — who did not hold a briefing to take reporters’ questions on the
budget update — said the steep belt-tightening is necessary to offset the more than $12 billion his
administration projects the city will spend by mid-2025 on sheltering and providing services for the
tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived since last year. The mayor said the fiscal chaos is being
fueled by a slowdown in tax revenues and the expiration of federal stimulus funding the city received
during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And he warned even more cuts could be on the table early next year unless the federal government
provides more financial and logistical aid to accommodate the migrants.

“No city should be left to handle a national humanitarian crisis largely on its own, and without the
significant and timely support we need from Washington, D.C., today’s budget will be only the
beginning,” the mayor’s missive said.

In a virtual briefing with reporters, Adams administration officials said the reason even more spending
reductions could be enacted early next year is because, despite the November plan’s deep cuts, there’s
a $7.1 billion budget deficit looming for the 2025 fiscal year, which begins July 1. As the city needs to
balance its budget by law, the officials said the Adams administration must figure out a way to fill that
$7.1 billion gap by mid-January.

Since the mayor’s not considering raising taxes, that fiscal hole must be addressed by reducing
spending, and while there’s currently no plan for it, the officials did not rule out that layoffs may be
necessary to bridge the gap should no more help come from the feds.

A more immediate new step the administration plans to take to further rein in spending is
implementing a Program to Eliminate the Gap or PEG, that will mandate a 20% reduction in spending
,

on housing and providing services for migrants, a source familiar with the matter told the Daily News.
That translates to the Adams administration having to cut its migrant crisis price-tag by more than $1
billion for this fiscal year alone under such a PEG.

A City Hall official who spoke at the briefing confirmed the administration plans to issue “guidance
sometime next week” to municipal agencies about the decrease in migrant spending, but would not
elaborate on how the 20% savings target will be met or whether it could involve shutting down
emergency shelters housing new arrivals.

The City Council will have to greenlight most of the cuts sought by Adams.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Council Finance Chairman Justin Brannan, the chamber’s lead
Democratic negotiators on budgetary issues, did not immediately say whether they will attempt to
block the mayor’s modification.

But they reiterated concerns that the Adams administration is overspending on the migrant crisis by
relying on “expensive emergency contracts with for-profit companies” rather than shifting to a
nonprofit model.

“The administration’s approach of reducing budgets of all agencies broadly through additional cuts
and a hiring freeze, along with inflicting cuts on our libraries, CUNY, and cultural institutions, is too
blunt and not the prudent or sole choice,” Speaker Adams and Brannan said. “With clear evidence that
city agencies are lagging in their ability to provide New Yorkers with necessary benefits and services
at historic levels, the administration must prioritize real exemptions from cuts to turn around city
agency performance issues.”

The Council’s Progressive Caucus made up 19 left-leaning Democrats who’ll still be members next
,

year, said in a statement they are ready to fight the mayor’s “unnecessary, dangerous and draconian
budget cuts.”

“We refuse to cooperate with across-the-board cuts on the backs of working- and middle-class
children and families,” their statement said.

Budget documents released by City Hall show no agencies were spared as part of the latest round of
cuts, which are part of a 5% city government-wide spending reduction first ordered by Adams in
September. Since then, agencies have developed spending reduction plans Adams said Wednesday
have been “extremely painful” to draft.

Some agencies are being hit harder than others, including the Department of Education, which is
seeing its budget slashed by more than $500 million in just this fiscal year under Adams’ plan. That will
result in major cuts to the city’s universal pre-K program, with at least some of the 37,000 current
vacancies in the initiative expected to be eliminated permanently.

The city’s Summer Rising program, which provides city kids with recreational activities during the
summer months, will scale back its middle school component dramatically. That will impact some
30,000 kids, officials added.

Hundreds of NYPD Recruits pictured inside the St. John’s University Gym listen to speeches during their graduation ceremony to
full fledge Police Officers Monday morning. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Daily News)

As first reported by The News on Wednesday, the modification plan will also freeze hiring of any new
police officers for the foreseeable future, a major concession for Adams who campaigned in 2021 on
beefing up the NYPD and has in past rounds of budget cuts avoided hampering the department in
which he used to serve as a captain.

There are currently more than 33,500 NYPD officers. In Thursday’s briefing, City Hall officials said
that due to that hiring freeze, the NYPD is on track to only have 29,000 cops by mid-2026, taking into
account projected retirements and other departures.

“This is the lowest it has been since the mid-1990s,” a City Hall official on the briefing said of the
projected police staffing levels.

That means some $131 million in funding for the NYPD is being slashed due to Adams’ modification,
budget documents show.

The Police Benevolent Association, the NYPD’s largest union, which to date has had a positive
relationship with Adams, blasted his police downsizing.

“Cops are already stretched to our breaking point, and these cuts will return us to staffing levels we
haven’t seen since the crime epidemic of the ’80s and ’90s,” PBA President Patrick Hendry said. “We
cannot go back there. We need every level of government to work together to find a way to support
police officers and protect New York City’s 30 years of public safety progress.”

Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

New York City Department of Sanitation taken on June 1, 2016. (Todd Maisel/New York Daily News)

Another significant sector that’s getting soaked by the budget modification is the city’s public library
systems.

In a joint statement, the heads of the New York, Brooklyn and Queens Public Library systems, which
service all five boroughs, said they will have to by mid-December end “Sunday service at the vast
majority of branches that currently offer it” due to the mayor’s cuts. In total, Adams’ modification is
reducing funding for the libraries by about $23.6 million, records show.

While making the city cleaner was a big priority for Adams on the 2021 campaign trail, his budget
modification is cutting $32 million for the Sanitation Department this fiscal year, a shave that will
result in a reduction of litter baskets across the city, including in parks, officials said. The department
will also eliminate city funding for a community composting program, and restrict alternate side
parking cleaning in some neighborhoods because of the trims, according to budget documents. It was
not immediately clear how sweeping such street cleaning rollbacks will be.

The mayor’s argument that the migrant influx is largely to blame for the Big Apple’s dire fiscal outlook
— even at one point saying the crisis will “ destroy ” the city — has for months rubbed some asylum-
advocates the wrong way.

Murray Awawdeh, New York Immigration Coalition Executive director speaks at a press conference near Gracie Mansion
Thursday, Nov. 16, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams for New York Daily News)

Murad Awawdeh, director of the New York Immigration Coalition, which has helped service migrants
since the crisis start in spring 2022, said after Thursday’s budget modification unveil that he remains
troubled by Adams’ rhetoric on the crisis.

“It’sunfortunate and incredibly disingenuous that this administration continues to scapegoat

immigrants for their bad investments that they’ve made,” Awawdeh said. “Instead of continuing on
those bad investments, they need to be making sure that we’re supporting people and getting them on
their own feet very quickly.”

With Michael Gartland and Josephine Stratman

More in Real Estate

SUBSCRIBER ONLY SUBSCRIBER ONLY SUBSCRIBER ONLY Adams admits contacting FDNY
Adams staffer Rana Abbasova ID’d Turkey’s NYC consulate has New York City Council moves to head about Turkish consulate
as person who ‘acted improperly,’ operated without full building spark new housing in rich opening, but doesn’t answer other
had her phone seized amid FBI permit in two years since Adams neighborhoods questions about FBI probe
probe: sources contacted FDNY

2023 November 16

Tribune Publishing Company Info Subscriber Services

Chicago Tribune About Us Archives
Baltimore Sun Careers
The Morning Call Help Center
The Daily Press Manage Web Notifications
The Virginian Pilot Place an ad
Orlando Sentinel Media Kit
Sun-Sentinel Privacy Policy
Hartford Courant Site Map
Capital Gazette
Studio 1847

Subscriber Terms and Conditions Cookie Policy Cookie Preferences California Notice at Collection CA Notice of Financial Incentive Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
Copyright © 2023 New York Daily News