Feeling the Pinch

Mayor Adams’s 5% Budget Cuts Have Taken Effect

In mid-November NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced 5% budget cuts across the board citing the immigrant crisis among other things that caused a need for this adjustment.

“For months, we have warned New Yorkers about the challenging fiscal situation our city faces,” said Adams. “To balance the budget as the law requires, every city agency dug into their own budget to find savings, with minimal disruption to services. And while we pulled it off this time, make no mistake: Migrant costs are going up, tax revenue growth is slowing, and COVID stimulus funding is drying up. 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.”

Recently the effects of these cuts have hit our area. 

The Greenpoint Library held a vigil on Sunday, December 17, the last Sunday they would be open for the foreseeable future. 

Compost has been compromised; organics drop-off sites at farmers markets were defunded and slated to stop before the holidays.  Fortunately for those who take their compost to McCarren Park’s farmers market, an anonymous donor offered financial support to allow compost drop offs at GrowNYC farmers markets to continue through June.  However, composting at Transmitter Park and McGolorick Park ended on December 17, for the time being.  

As the budget cuts hit across all agencies, it is especially concerning that as of December 2 the NYC Fire Department (FDNY) had to reduce their staff and removed the fifth firefighter.  December and January are seen as peak months during the year for home fires by the Red Cross. 20 engine companies lost 20% of their staff.  However, engine companies in North Brooklyn were not named in this cut, but more cuts are coming.

The official Twitter account of the Uniformed Firefighters Association stated, “This reduction of staffing will make it more difficult to fight fires in those effected neighborhoods. Studies have shown that having that additional firefighter can cut in half the time it takes to put water on a fire. During a fire, saving seconds save lives, and losing time costs lives. The staffing cuts made today will cause a delay of minutes not seconds, and the NYC budget will be balanced by putting the lives of NYC residents and the safety of NYC Firefighters on the table.”

NYC Department of Education had to cut $547M from its budget. About a quarter of this loss will be addressed with cuts in the employment of vacant non-classroom positions and a slowdown in hiring in general.  However, the current cuts and future cuts (in January and spring 2024) will effect services that benefit students directly. Universal Pre-K is said to lose $120M next fiscal year and there are worries about how the cuts will touch afterschool and summer programs.  On December 20, the United Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit on the grounds that the budget cuts violate two laws: Education Law 2576, which mandates that the city cannot cut spending on K12 education compared to the prior year, unless the city has suffered an overall decline in revenue, which has not occurred — and NYS Contracts for Excellence law.  In a post on Class Size Matters’ NYC Public School Parents blog it states this law, “specifically says additional state funds awarded under the program must be “used to supplement, and not supplant funds allocated by the district.” And yet these cuts have been imposed despite the DOE receiving an additional $500 million this year in C4E funds – the third phase in of more than $1.3 billion over the last three years, meant to be invested in improving classroom conditions including lowering class sizes. Instead, class sizes have increased the last two years.”

These are just some examples. All NYC agencies have been cut, and this translates to loss of services and jobs.

What can be done?

Some agencies are trying to find private donors.  The United Federation of Teachers has filed a lawsuit to block the Mayor’s cuts to education, based on the claim that these proposed cuts violate two state laws.  There have been several rallies at City Hall.

In defense of the cuts, Mayor Adams has repeatedly stated the Federal Government has abandoned NYC during the migrant crisis by not providing the city enough funding.  In November he said, “I tell people all the time when they stop me on the subway system, ‘Don’t yell at me, yell at DC.’”  Then at a press conference on December 19, Adams stated, “I’m saying to New Yorkers: ‘You’re angry and I’m angry — and the source of our discontent lies in Washington, D.C.”

Brandon West, who previously worked at the NYC Office of Management and Budget and as a City Council budget analyst, wrote a piece in The Indypendent published on December 18, 2023 that encouraged the NYC Council to “vote it down, unless the Mayor agrees to halt cuts until the regular FY25 budget process begins, or rolls back cuts to composting, libraries, schools, CUNY, child care, and essential services and finds further savings in the NYPD and DOC’s bloated budgets. City Council can also reject budget modifications if they are of a significant size.”  He does state that the NYC Council are not required to vote on budget modifications and even if they did vote it down, “the mayor can still cut or underspend, like they would in a hiring freeze … but it can curtail some of the mayor’s power.” West also warned, “another 10% cuts to come by April 2024.”