New York, NY – Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled his revised $63 billion budget plan for fiscal 2011, which includes shedding 11,000 public employees through layoffs and attrition.
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The mayor, an independent, repeatedly blamed the city’s problems on the state, saying Governor David Paterson’s $135 billion budget plan could take $1.3 billion from the city — though the state gets half of its money from the city.
“It’s clear we cannot continue to do everything we have been doing with the size of the workforce we have — we just don’t have the revenue, and we’re not going to get the help from Albany,” the mayor said in a televised news conference.
The mayor said the state has worsened the city’s financial stress by missing an April 1 budget deadline, creating uncertainty. Unless the state restores funding, the teachers will bear the brunt of the job cuts, with 6,414 positions lost, partly through attrition.
Bloomberg’s list of cuts includes firefighter positions, the closing of 50 senior centers and four city pools. The mayor will also reduce spending on children’s services, libraries, and museums.
A slim rise in tax revenue will help the city avoid cutting 892 police department jobs that had been slated for the budget ax, he said.
“We feel that this is one of the things we have to do to keep the city safe,” he said.
Bloomberg will also skip raises of slightly more than one percent for much of the city’s workforce for the next two years to save about $1 billion, and halve a planned 4 percent hike for teachers to save $500 million by 2013.
“For the next couple of years it is very unlikely we will be able to give any raises expect perhaps through collective bargaining, where we can get savings in health and pension costs,” said Bloomberg.
Though fiscal monitors have faulted the mayor for giving city workers overly generous wage hikes in his first two four-year terms, Bloomberg, now in his third term, defended these increases, saying they were needed to attract the best public employees.
Last year, the city had about 311,000 workers and paid for about 280,000 of them; the state and federal government pick up the tab for the rest.
The city’s revenue tumbled during Wall Street’s decline, and Bloomberg said it could take a couple of years or longer before there is a full recovery.
Until then, the cash-poor city faces deficits, projected at $3.8 billion in fiscal 2012, $4.6 billion in 2013 and $5.3 billion in fiscal 2014, he said.
Bloomberg plans to cut all city employees, he doesn’t need them, he will turn them in to meter maids.
I already know how this works. Bloomberg says were going to cut all these programs then the union bashes him on tv and radio and then he just raises taxes to pay for their raises and life goes on.
Why stop at only 11,000? You could cut another 30,00 and still not miss these people. When times are tough, it time to make tough decisions.
Let the unions take a hike off the GW Bridge.
Just make the cuts across the board. Start with the Rubber Rooms in the schools first, and get rid of some of the leedhes that occupy al avenues of Gov’t.
Good luck with all the layoffs, and continue them in greater numbers.
He did not fire 892 cops to keep the city safe.
However, the Times Square bomb car was notices by street vendors.Cops keep harassing people in New York, and it is becomes very dangerous as citizens do not want repot suspicious things to evade contacts with the police.
CPR is only a PR.
They should fire 892 cops, It will make new york a safer place.
Ever went to a city or state office ?? 50 % of them can be fired for doing a lay job take a class of any frum school and they can do the job of 100 fat lazy city workers. Vehameivin yovin
I have no problem firing useless, lazy, unneccessary workers, but maybe the Mayor could keep them on the payroll (so they don’t bleed us dry through welfare) by paying them out of his billions of dollars he has in his personal off-shore tax havens.