Mayor Adams rolled out a $109.4 billion budget proposal Tuesday that averts some cuts to police, sanitation, libraries and social programs, but keeps a range of other unpopular spending reductions in place even as his administration predicts city tax revenues are set to greatly improve.
The preliminary budget bid, which Adams presented in an afternoon speech at City Hall, marks the starting point of months of negotiations between his team and the City Council before the two sides must finalize a final spending plan before the July 1 start of the 2025 fiscal year.
Citing fiscal fallout from the migrant crisis, Adams announced last year the preliminary budget plan would include a so-called Program to Eliminate the Gap, or PEG, requiring all city agencies to slash their budgets by 5%. That was supposed to come on top of a 5% PEG all agencies were already subjected to in November that resulted in drastic public service reductions, including the city’s three public library systems being forced to end Sunday hours at all their branches.
But in Tuesday’s presentation, Adams said his team was able to exempt the NYPD, the FDNY, the Department of Sanitation and the city’s three public library systems from the latest round of 5% cuts. As first announced last week, Adams said he’s also restoring a handful of his November cuts, allowing the NYPD to reinstate a previously cancelled Police Academy class of 600 officers and the Department of Sanitation to keep 9,000 litter baskets on city streets that were initially going to be removed.
In addition, Adams said his preliminary plan lowers the latest cuts for the Department of Education, which runs the country’s largest public school system, the Department of Social Services, which oversees the city’s shelter system, the Department for the Aging and the Department of Youth and Community Development.
For the Department of Education, the cut is being dialed down to 0.6%, while the Department of Social Services faces a 2.7% trim instead, according to City Hall.
A City Hall budget director, who only spoke on condition of anonymity during a virtual briefing later Tuesday, said those agencies’ cuts got lowered because the impact on them “would be so severe” if the full reduction was enacted.
“We made these adjustments because we know that these are the services that are important to New Yorkers, and they’re important to this administration,” Adams said in his prepared remarks.
The reasons he’s able to call off some cuts are manifold, Adams said.
He said his administration has managed to reduce the projected cost for caring for the tens of thousands of newly-arrived migrants in the city by $1.8 billion through the end of June 2026. He cited that reduction in cost to contracting with more nonprofits for migrant services, though he did not elaborate further.
He also said his administration’s new projections for personal, business, sales and property tax revenues have dramatically improved.
Jacques Jiha, Adams’ budget director, said his team is now projecting $2.9 billion more in revenue than previously estimated over the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years — an even rosier forecast than the one presented by City Council Democrats, who have for months accused the mayor of lowballing his tax forecasts.
In addition, Gov. Hochul announced as part of her executive budget release Tuesday she’s ready to commit $2.4 billion in state aid to help the city tackle the migrant crisis.
Despite the improved fiscal portrait and more migrant crisis assistance in the pipeline, Adams did not as part of his Tuesday announcement reverse any more cuts implemented as part of his November plan. In fact, he laid out more belt-tightening efforts.
Budget documents show hiring freezes will remain across nearly all city agencies under the preliminary plan to save money.
Also under the preliminary plan, the Department of Education would have to slash $50 million in the next fiscal year from the city’s universal 3-K program, the documents show. The Department of Parks, meantime, would have to eliminate a community garden program for “at risk youth” — a move that will save the city $140,000 in the 2025 fiscal year, according to the documents.
In a briefing Tuesday afternoon, Adams said some smaller cuts are being enacted because “we have to balance our budget by law.”
“None of these cuts are easy,” Adams said.
Council Democrats are expected to call for many of the mayor’s remaining cuts to be reversed during coming months of negotiations.
Speaking to reporters in the City Hall rotunda after the mayor’s briefing, Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who chairs the Council Finance Committee, said reversing a $24 million November cut to the library systems is a “first and foremost” priority.
Because of that November cut, the libraries had to eliminate Sunday service. Library leaders warned they would’ve had to end Saturday service, too, if Adams didn’t back off the latest cuts.
“It’s great that we’re saving Saturday service, but we still want to restore Sunday service,” Brannan said.
In a sign there are other fronts that the Council’s going to fight on, too, Brannan added, “There’s still some cuts that we’d like to see restored from the November plan.”
Last year, Adams said he will have to enact another round of 5% cuts across all agencies this April unless the city receives more migrant help from the state and federal governments.
The mayor wouldn’t immediately say if the governor’s $2.4 billion migrant aid commitment was enough to take the April cuts off the table, saying he needs to first “dig into” the specifics of her plan.
“We are hoping that we have enough so we don’t have to do the April PEGs,” he said.
