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New York Mayor Eric Adams revealed his $102.7 billion Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year 2024 on Thursday, which is set to begin in July.
The five-year plan reflects the impending challenges for New York City, including the thousands of asylum seekers looking for shelters and food assistance.
With Adams’ plan, budget cuts are proposed for this year’s spending plan, around $5 billion, so the mayor can address the city’s main focus areas: safety, housing and sanitation.
“As our city continues its recovery, our administration continues to make investments in our core priorities—including public safety, affordable housing and clean streets—while exercising strong fiscal management,” he said. “By asking agencies to self-fund new needs with preexisting resources, the Fiscal Year 2024 Preliminary Budget continues our strong track record of making prudent use of taxpayer dollars while continuing to ‘Get Stuff Done’ for New Yorkers.”
According to NY Times, Adams’s goal is to keep city spending leveled, and some members of the City Council don’t like the areas where budgets are cut. For example, the mayor requested that agencies self-funded needs, and he suggested refraining from filling vacancies to save money to handle those needs. But City Council members claim that cuts in services will occur if companies aren’t hiring.
Furthermore, city libraries are looking at a $20 million decreased funding for the fiscal year ’24, leading to cuts in library programs.
“We are saying 50%, that’s what we want them to remove,” Adams explained. “That’s the same for our libraries. These are tough times.”
Budget cuts are happening with agencies like the NYPD (from %5.59 billion in FY23 to $5.44 billion in FY24), FDNY (from $2.51 billion in FY23 to $2.24 billion in FY24), and the Department of Education (from $31.25 billion in FY23 to $30.74 billion in FY24).
Expenses for debt services and pension costs will increase, with the debt services’ budget drastically rising from $4.5 billion in 2023 to $5.73 billion in 2024 (estimated to reach $9.76 billion in 2027). Pension budgets are estimated to go up from $9.41 billion in 2023 to $9.56 billion in 2024 (should get around $9.8 billion in 2027). The “Miscellaneous” category will increase from $13.4 billion to $15 billion between 2023 and 2024.
The city still has yet to figure out budgeting for the thousands of asylum seekers, which officials estimate will be around $1 billion in the 2023 fiscal year.
Despite disagreements between the City Council and the mayor, Adams assures the city’s officials will figure everything out eventually.
Undoubtedly, COVID contributed to a lot of NYC’s fiscal downfalls. For example, when businesses converted to working remotely, hindering the commercial real estate market. And one of the main goals is to get the city to recover financially from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adams says the economy is facing slow growth and the city’s officials are working to “combat inflation.”