On Thursday Nov. 16th NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced his budget cuts to a variety of NYC services due to a lack of federal financial assistance in the ongoing migrant crisis. In the statement made by Adams he highlighted that there would be budget cuts made across city services in order to bridge the gap in next year’s budgets. According to Adams the migrant crisis is estimated to cost close to eleven billion dollars over the course of the next two years however next year’s budget has an estimated seven billion dollar deficit; Adams cuts are supposed to eliminate or at least elevate that gap.
These cuts include bringing the NYC Police Department to 29,000 officers, the lowest number of officers since the 80’s as well as implementing a police hiring freeze. Adams has also announced his plan to cut funding to NYC’s department of education by around one billion over the course of next two years. Libraries too will receive budget cuts in the coming year with various library staff/administration noting that “without sufficient funding, we cannot sustain our current levels of service, and any further cuts to the libraries’ budgets will, unfortunately, result in deeper service impacts.” In response to criticism and pushback Adams has maintained that he is not to blame noting, “Don’t blame me. Blame D.C.” While announcing his planned budget cuts for the next fiscal year Adams stated that “Without significant and timely support we need from Washington D.C., today’s budget will be only the beginning.”
Despite Adam’s claims that D.C. is to blame for these new budgets, on Nov 2. just before Adam’s was supposed to speak to White House officials, news broke that the FBI had raided Adam’s chief of fundraising Brianna Suggs’ home. Adams immediately flew back to NYC abandoning the meeting’s with White House officials where he was supposed to talk about and figure out a plan to deal with the ongoing migrant crisis in NYC.
NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, responsible for auditing the finances of city agencies and services, opposed Adam’s position and the budget cuts in a statement saying that Adams needs to continue to fight for federal funding and needs to “stop suggesting that asylum seekers are the reason for severe cuts” noting that much of the gaps in budgeting “already existed.”
A day before announcing his planned budget cuts Adams along with NYC school officials came together to celebrate the increase in student enrollment, which comes as a result of the growing number of migrants in the city. NYC Public School officials have come out against these budget cuts emphasizing that they are coming at a time when schools need resources to recover from the pandemic, school closures, as well as the increase in students enrolled in NYC public schools. The President of the United Federation of Teachers, Michael Mulgrew emphasized that around forty three percent of schools across the city would be forced to make budget cuts and that schools would be “needlessly damaged.”
