NYC CITY COUNCIL-MAYOR BUDGET DEAL INCLUDES LAYOFFS OF CITY WORKERS AS A LAST RESORT

I tried to listen carefully to Mayor Bill de Blasio's presser today where he talked mostly about the agreement he reached with the City Council on the final fiscal year 2021 NYC budget.  I attempted to follow the Mayor closely but de Blasio is more difficult for me to monitor than UFT President Michael Mulgrew. Mulgrew sometimes enrages me when I listen to him so I stay alert but de Blasio often bores me to tears which sometimes puts me to sleep.

YouTube has a video of the press conference.

Here is a summary of some of what the Mayor said today:

The budget is $88 billion. There is no authority from the state government to allow the city to borrow money yet and there is no aid yet from Washington that would bring stimulus money for states and municipalities. de Blasio stated that if we can't get the stimulus from DC or the borrowing authority from Albany, then October 1st looms and as the last resort he would have to lay off city workers. Layoffs are included in the budget but again he says it is only a last resort.

As for savings, de Blasio stated that there are $1 billion in labor savings that are included that he will try to agree to with the unions. (Look out as I have no idea what the givebacks will be but we can expect them. Go to about the 3-minute mark of the video to hear this part.) 

His labor commissioner said the DOE would hire from the ATR pool for new positions needed in the schools.  Summer Youth is back. 100,000 kids served. 

The Mayor said DOE will train Safety Agents for restorative justice and social-emotional learning. NYPD can still deal with violent and criminal matters in schools. The budget director said there would be $400 million cut from the DOE budget.

The mayor didn't deny that moving school safety to the DOE wasn't really an NYPD cut but he stated the roles would be changed because of the changes in approach to school safety.

 

The NY Post reporting on the deal says Fair Student Funding is no longer cut but rather frozen:

The ‘Fair Student’ program that helps equalize funding between Gotham’s richer and poorer school districts will see its funding remain flat, instead of facing a $100 million cut

The Department of Education’s popular ‘Single Sheperd’ guidance counselor program for high needs schools faced the ax but now has its $11 million budget back

Here is the Post's account on the cuts to the NYPD:

It transfers the school safety officers back to the Department of Education, moving $307 million off of the NYPD’s budget in the first year. It also calls for school safety agents to be moved to another still-unspecified agency, accounting for another $42 million.

Controversially, sources told The Post, City Hall also tallied the $134 million in fringe benefits — like health, dental and eye care — associated with those employees and counted those savings toward the $1 billion goal.

The NYPD is also supposed to slash its overtime spending by $352 million in 2021 — roughly half of its annual outlay, which exceeded $700 million in each of the last three completed budget.

Much of the rest of the savings come from reducing the department’s uniformed headcount by 1,163 through attrition, the sources added. Once more, City Hall counted the costs of providing benefits to those employees towards the $1 billion mark.