Cut The (Budget) Cuts Mr. Mayor

Community Advocates Demand City Use $8 Billion Surplus Instead

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
“Everything is on the table,” said Mayor Eric Adams at an “ethnic media” roundtable. He was referencing possible alternatives to his painful financial cuts hitting the five boroughs.
At the same time, New York City has an $8 billion rainy day fund. Mayor Eric Adams acknowledges it now. It’s raining. The influx of 150,000-plus migrants in the past year simply exacerbated an already dire crisis of under-served people in the city. Adams announced draconian 5% cuts across all city agencies last month in his notorious November Plan, including a $547 million shortfall to schools. The City says that the November Financial Plan Update is set to save $3.7 billion over the next two years.

Our Time Press asked if cuts to programs and -needed facilities were actually necessary.
“Nothing is off the table,” he replied. Apparently, efforts are being made to figure out if there are other money-saving solutions that would not impact the schools.
Mayor Eric Adams’ November Plan established that he would subject New York City to city-agency-wide $5 billion cuts by year-end and $7 billion in January.
The draconian cutbacks would hit school programs and activities, public parks and libraries, the FDNY, and the NYPD. And since when were church services held for the closure of libraries as they were this past Sunday?
Meanwhile, President Joseph Biden seems reluctant to give the Big Apple a decent slice of federal funds to help alleviate this national issue of tens of thousands of migrants being bused or even flown to blue states by Texas Governor Gregg Abbot and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
“DC has abandoned us, and they need to be paying their cost to this national problem,” Mayor Adams. “This is unfair what we’re doing to migrant asylum seekers, and it’s unfair what we’re doing to everyday taxpayers.”

It all seemed so promising in the beginning. The mayor was jetting off to D.C. fairly often. New Yorkers thought the money flow would be frequent. Not so fast. Those visits slowed down. As Politico.com said with regards to President Biden, “he hasn’t spoken to him in nearly a year.”
So Mayor Adams advised New Yorkers, “Don’t yell at me, yell at DC.’”

The Mayor insists that New York’s 2024 $111 billion city budget is not enough to cover predicted costs, and mounting city expenses will create a $7 billion deficit in 2025. He says that the city has already spent $1.5 billion on the migrant influx.

“We had 150,000 migrants. A new city moved into our city,” said Mayor Adams, “57 percent we were able to stabilize. 80 percent of those we gave the 30-day rule went on to stabilize their lives.”
Perhaps the cuts that will impact the entire city the most may just be the $547 million slashing to the school budget. The drastic measure inspired the lawsuit against the mayor’s administration and the New York State Education Department by United Federation of Teachers union head Michael Mulgrew, AFL-CIO, United Community Schools, and others. In their complaint filed last week in Manhattan Supreme Court, the plaintiffs argue that “state law protects education funding from the temptation of local officials to deprioritize education from other preferred policies or to use such funding as a political football.”

Wanting the cuts to be cut and the DOE’s $14 billion budget restored, they said their legal action is to prevent the “Mayor from violating these laws by unilaterally moving to slash the New York City Department of Education’s DOE FY 2024 and FY 2025 education budget by staggering amounts. The approximate $547 million in immediate budget…together with the further cuts proposed that may amount to close to $2 billion stripped from City schools this fiscal year and next, will have a far-reaching and devastating impact on teachers and New York City children.”

They balk at the Mayor’s “unverified estimate” of a $11/12 billion by 2025 migrant crisis bill. Citing the $8 billion unanticipated revenue increase, UFT president Mulgrew said, “We have historic reserves in the city of New York…and they keep making up these numbers. You will not fabricate this fraud upon this city.”
One issue rallying advocates say should be on the table is – repealing the lucrative tax breaks of big schools that are also real estate moguls like NYU and Columbia, and then there are the stadiums, and property owned by major religious institutions.
The mayor delivers his “Everything is on the table,” refrain. Yet, tapping into the surplus is “not sustainable,” he said, what with the non-stop flow of migrants coming in by the 1000s every week. “The entire country should absorb this, not just a few cities.”
Gothamist reported last week that as part of former transit cop/retired NYPD captain-now Mayor Adams, and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s subway safety push, “NYPD overtime pay for extra officers in the subway went from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million this year.”
“The budget cuts proposed risk doing harm to the well-being of all New Yorkers, especially our most vulnerable, “ said New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “City Hall should stop suggesting that asylum seekers are the reason for imposing severe cuts when they are only contributing to a portion of these budget gaps, much of which already existed.”
Lander continued, “We must continue to press for more state and federal funding…our focus should be on helping asylum seekers file their Temporary Protected Status and asylum applications, obtain work authorizations, get jobs, move out of shelter and contribute to the economy — to avoid slashing services to them and all New Yorkers.”

The Comptroller’s Office “estimates that asylum seeker costs could total $465 million less than the City budgeted this year, and $1.61 billion less than planned for FY 2025. The Comptroller’s Office estimate of total asylum seeker costs in FY 2024 and FY 2025 is about 20 percent lower than what the Mayor projects over the two years.
“Scapegoating immigrants for those cuts is antithetical to the defining role of New York as a beacon of promise, inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty,” said New York City Comptroller Brad Lander.
Community advocate Paul Muhammad from East New York’s Mosque 7C, told Our Time Press. “The overall scheduled cuts to the city’s civic services, fire, sanitation, and police, along with defunding or short-funding supportive human services agencies and non-profits, will accelerate the erosion of safety and quality of life standards for the poor people of this City. The cost of maintaining this city should be shared by those who profit the most. Developers and real estate investors are receiving huge subsidies, low-interest loans and grants, and extremely favorable zoning laws.
“They benefit from federal, state, city grants, and tax abatements – some up to and over 20 years. But, local homeowners are facing higher taxes to pay for the City’s needs.”
An irate Mr. Muhammad advised, “Stop giving the developers billions in welfare now and losing billions in future tax revenues from. Say ‘No more’ to the City of Developers free ride.”
Bed Stuy native Professor Sam Anderson told Our Time Press, “The budget cuts are going to be devastating, especially around education. The schools are already in bad shape on many different levels. The development of public education is deteriorating in New York, and the $500 million budget cut is totally unnecessary.“
Anderson, a retired math and Black history professor, continued, “There is money available, but it is being directed towards tax right-offs for developers, investment in more gentrified areas, and so on. The budget cut to libraries is going to have a direct impact on our children in the next two years.”