NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams announced New York City’s executive budget for the next fiscal year on Wednesday.
Though it avoids major cuts, members of the City Council are questioning why any had to be made at all.
“Like it or not, we’re doin’ the damn thing,” Adams said.
Wednesday was budget day for the 2025 fiscal year and yet, the mayor spoke often of 2022, the start of his administration, when he says the work began to avoid cuts.
“We managed this budget. We managed our way out of not one crisis, we managed out of the crisis of COVID, and we managed our way out of the crisis of asylum seekers,” Adams said.
More than 1,000 NYPD recruits, $500 million in education funds restored
The budget restores two NYPD recruiting classes, which the mayor’s office says will add 1,200 officers. As reported last week, $500 million was restored to city education programs, which the mayor says means any child who wants a pre-K or 3-K seat can get one.
One thing that was not restored was $58 million for city libraries.
“Tough choices. The prerequisite to prosperity is public safety. People that go to libraries, I want them to get there safely,” Adams said.
Justin Brannan, the chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee, disagrees. He said there is more than $1 billion left to spend that could have prevented any cuts, but isn’t in the executive budget announced Wednesday.
“Tough decisions don’t have to be made because we have the money for all of this stuff,” Brannan said.
Councilman, mayor at odds over whether cuts were even needed in first place
You didn’t even need to dive in for some light reading to understand one of the mayor’s larger points on Wednesday. He said he believes his administration’s conservative projections — and the negative headlines they sometimes caused about what might be cut — are paying off.
“We took a lot of heat, because we were making the right decisions,” Adams said.
“How many of the cuts were actually made? How many of the cuts were proposed? What’s actually going on? And that just adds to a certain type of feeling in the city that we don’t want,” Brannan said.
The Urban Youth Collective, a youth-led city coalition, said in a statement, “While the Adams administration was manufacturing a budget crisis so he could be a hero, we were sick with worry that the critical programs we rely on at school would be cut entirely.”
The Adams administration’s proposal will now be reviewed in public hearings in the City Council. Brannan compared the process to being in just the “third inning.”
The budget will next be reviewed in public hearings in the City Council.
