Mayor Eric Adams Says N.Y.C. Will Slash Budgets For Police, Libraries and Schools (original) (raw)

New York|Eric Adams Slashes Budgets for Police, Libraries and Schools

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/nyregion/nyc-budget-cuts-schools-police-trash.html

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Mr. Adams said the migrant crisis made the deep budget cuts necessary. Progressive Democrats called the reductions dangerous and unnecessary.

The mayor stands at a lectern with his mouth open to speak. He wears a purple, white and black striped tie and gray suit.

Mayor Eric Adams said New York City would need to reduce some essential services because of the expense of housing an influx of homeless migrants.Credit...Stephanie Keith for The New York Times

Nov. 16, 2023

Mayor Eric Adams announced painful budget cuts to New York City services on Thursday that would freeze police hiring and close libraries on Sunday and warned that more cuts would be necessary without additional federal funding to manage the migrant crisis.

The budget cuts would bring the number of Police Department officers below 30,000 for the first time since the 1980s, slash the Education Department budget by $1 billion over two years and delay the rollout of composting in the Bronx and Staten Island — one of the mayor’s signature initiatives to address rats and climate change. The cuts would also weaken two popular programs: summer school and universal prekindergarten.

Mr. Adams said in a statement that he had to make cuts across city agencies in response to the rising costs of the migrant crisis, slowing tax revenues and the ending of federal pandemic aid.

“No city should be left to handle a national humanitarian crisis largely on its own, and without the significant and timely support we need from Washington, D.C., today’s budget will be only the beginning,” he said.

The cuts to New York City’s $110 billion budget come as Mr. Adams is facing two crises that could come to define his mayoralty and his chances at winning a second term — an influx of migrants from the southern border that he has said could destroy the city, and a federal investigation into his campaign’s fund-raising.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat in his second year in office, had warned at a news conference on Tuesday that the budget cuts would be “extremely painful for New Yorkers.”

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