On the city surplus:
Based on IBO’s analysis of tax revenues and spending
as presented under the Mayor’s plan, along with our own
updated economic forecast, we estimate the city will have
$1.2 billion in additional city-generated revenue offset by
some additional spending, enough to end the current fiscal
year with a surplus of $1.0 billion.
Further along we are told:
IBO’s 2018 surplus estimate does not include the $1.45
billion currently allocated for two reserves within the fiscal
year 2018 budget—these reserves are currently counted
as expenditures but do not support any specific spending
needs.
Translation, the city is expected to end the year with about $2.5 billion that they are not speding.
We also learn from the IBO report that the NYC economy is growing but not at a torrid pace. Wall Street is doing just fine. IBO does see storm clouds ahead mainly because of the federal budget and the tax changes.
The IBO says this about municipal labor contracts:
Perhaps the most immediate threat to balancing the city’s
budget is the impending cost of settling contracts with
the city’s municipal labor unions. Currently, over 100,000
full-time city employees, approximately 33 percent of the
city’s full-time workforce, are working under the terms
of expired contracts, including the city’s largest union,
District Council 37. By the end of calendar year 2018
contracts covering nearly 90 percent of the city’s full-time
workforce will have expired, including the contract for the
United Federation of Teachers.
The de Blasio Administration has set aside $631 million
in the current fiscal year increasing to $2.4 billion by
2021 to cover the costs of potential labor settlements.
IBO estimates that for each 1 percent increase in annual
wages the city would spend an additional $121 million
in the current fiscal year and slightly over $1.1 billion in
2021.
The de Blasio Administration has taken the position that it is willing to be flexible on the extent of future wage increases only if the unions are willing to pay for them with givebacks that would reduce city expenditures. After giving back over $1.4 billion in concessions over the last four years for health care savings through increases in co-pays, higher premiums, and eligibility audits, in order to secure wage increases during the previous round of contract negotiations, the city’s labor unions may be galvanized in their efforts to seek greater wage increases with fewer givebacks in the coming negotiations. The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, representing some 23,000 fulltime police officers, has already rejected the city’s contract offers and requested that all negotiations be handled through binding arbitration.
The de Blasio Administration has taken the position that it is willing to be flexible on the extent of future wage increases only if the unions are willing to pay for them with givebacks that would reduce city expenditures. After giving back over $1.4 billion in concessions over the last four years for health care savings through increases in co-pays, higher premiums, and eligibility audits, in order to secure wage increases during the previous round of contract negotiations, the city’s labor unions may be galvanized in their efforts to seek greater wage increases with fewer givebacks in the coming negotiations. The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, representing some 23,000 fulltime police officers, has already rejected the city’s contract offers and requested that all negotiations be handled through binding arbitration.
Fear not IBO, DC 37 or the UFT are usually willing to settle for less and one of the two unions will most likely set a low pattern that other city workers, including the PBA, will be stuck with. We predicted it last month as did the Chief and we expect a pattern will be established at some point in 2018, probably sooner rather than later.
I am not in massive need of a big raise. What I want is a return to sane working conditions. IF the UFT can't get us a fat raise, they sure as hell better get us some decent changes to our contract. (Kill Danielson, etc.)
ReplyDeleteEnd Un Fair Student Funding, stop murders and assaults in schools, cap classes, get rid of Bloomberg’s employees which include lawyers
ReplyDeleteAnd don't forget rapes.
ReplyDeleteYou guys are not too bright are you? You don't think the city sees your strategy to all leave the UFT. they will react by giving the teachers an even worse deal in the contract than we are already going to get with 40% not in the union.Every day it is revealed a little more how dumb NY's dumbest (the teachers) are.
ReplyDeleteWho gives a fuck!!!!
DeleteMikey will still claim the city is broke and spend more time advocating for the Mayor and DOE. Mikey will call it a won irregardless. This union will sink like the Titanic if Mikey and crew and are still in their positions post Janus.
ReplyDeleteWhat are you going to do to change this inconvenient fact that Mikey is still in power? Nothing.
ReplyDeleteFile a class action law suit if you’re an ATR
Deletehttp://teacherslawyer.blogspot.com/2017/12/asking-courts-if-fair-student-funding.html?m=1
SCHOOLS HAVE NEVER BEEN SAFER...The girl took punch after punch from every direction. It all happened so fast, she barely had time to react. It came at the hands of mostly eleventh and twelfth graders who pummeled the victim and threw her up against the front of a vehicle.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing happened barely a block away from school property with cars and buses speeding past.
Seretha Houston is the victim’s mother.
“She could have easily been hit by a bus. She could have really been killed,” she said.
Houston’s daughter is a freshman at Theatre Arts Production Company High School in the Fordham section of the Bronx.What happened here has her so scared that she didn’t even want to speak out on camera. She was bruised and her mother filed a police report.
“You’re angry, then you’re mad, then you want to retaliate, but you can’t because there are kids and you can’t do anything as a parent,” Houston said.
That feeling of helplessness was echoed by Daphne Mays. In another incident her daughter Kyla Rose Clemons was pushed into a wall by an eleventh grader, inside the school earlier this month.
“Just the thought that someone could do that to my child. Not good, ” she said.
Kyla Rose said she did everything she could to defend herself, and hit the junior back to get her to stop. That’s when a security guard was able to intervene, and separate the two.
“She just punched me,” she said.
Police confirmed the harassment violation, but said no one was arrested.
Mays said the harassment has been going on since the beginning of the school year, and she worries if something isn’t done, it could get worse.
“It’s been months and she has no help. I’m angry. I’m really angry,” she said.
Kyla Rose said it’s always juniors and seniors that are targeting freshman physically and verbally.
“They just yell at us and curse at us,” she said.
And it’s turned violent.
Last Wednesday, CBS2 reached out to the Department of Education, which would only issue a written statement.
“The school is providing a safe environment and there are clear systems to ensure reports of bullying are immediately reported, investigated, and addressed.”
The department would not confirm that a bullying problem exists at the school.
In 2012, the principal at the same high school was removed after the education department found the staff had falsified student transcripts and given students credit for courses they hadn’t taken.
The schools are more, much more dangerous than they have ever been. Nothing is being reported and no one cares except the victims and their families.
ReplyDeleteSubways are also very dangerous. I've seen some crazy stuff - from guys grinding on women to assholes slashing at each other with box cutters. The same assholes we have to try to teach.
ReplyDeleteThese poor kids are the victims of white oppression
DeleteIt's the patriarchy keeping them down.
ReplyDelete