Mayor Adams: Budget cuts coming to all NYC agencies; lower COVID-19 funding, migrant crisis to blame
The Adams administration claims that dwindling COVID-19 funding and the ongoing migrant crisis are the core reasons behind the 5% budget cuts.
The budgets for New York City’s agencies will be seeing a slash, with the impact of these cuts likely to impact the everyday life of the city’s residents.
The Adams administration claims that dwindling COVID-19 funding and the ongoing migrant crisis are the core reasons behind the 5% budget cuts coming to each city agency.
The plan is already receiving pushback from advocacy groups and some lawmakers.
“This is going to impact the city,” said Mayor Eric Adams. “There’s no way we’re going to be able to get beyond this without every agency being impacted. I spoke with my cultural institutions today, my nonprofits. We’re going to let New Yorkers know this is a very painful moment for all of us.”
For the NYPD, the cuts will cause the next five classes of new police recruits to be put on hold, as they plan to downsize the force to 29,000 over the next few years – making it the lowest count it’s had since the mid-1990s.
Education cuts will remove many vacant positions at public schools, and universal 3-K and pre-K will be downsized with the possible removal of entire classes. Community schools will lose $10 million, and the city’s Summer Rising program will take a hit as well, with reduced hours and days for the 30,000 middle school slots.
Many of the largest library branches in the Bronx and Brooklyn will no longer have their doors open on Sundays, as the NYPL will cut back on new materials and programming.
“The council has to put forward our own analysis… if there are places where we need to find savings, we’re going to put together some alternate areas where we can save money,” said City Council member and chair of the council’s finance committee Justin Brannan. “We don’t have to make cuts or freezes to the NYPD or street cleaning, and that’s on us as a council to put those ideas forward.”
Mayor Adams says that there is still a budget gap that is over $7 billion, and City Hall sources say that similar cuts are expected in January and possibly April of 2024.
