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Bloomberg's 2013 Budget Spends More On Tree Planting Than Science Campus
By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 3, 2012
Modified Feb 3, 2012
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By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 3, 2012
Modified Feb 3, 2012
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Mayor Bloomberg seemed less ominous than recent years in announcing his $68.7 billion preliminary budget for the 2013 Fiscal Year yesterday, which is balanced as required by law and doesn't feature any tax hikes or layoffs of teachers or cops. Rocking a blue V-neck sweater in honor of the Giants' Super Bowl bid, Bloomberg told reporters, "Cities across the country have struggled to keep their heads above water - laying off teachers, police officers, or firefighters, with a few even having to declare bankruptcy,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “We’ve avoided those painful steps, because we spent years planning ahead, made government more efficient and saved for a rainy day."
City and State points out a fun fact about Mayor Bloomberg's budget: Cornell University’s planned applied science campus on Roosevelt Island is a relatively thrifty investment for the city. At just $100 million, the project is far cheaper than the budget's $1.5 billion to repair a water supply tunnel. It's cheaper than the $594 million allocated for a prison at Rikers Island, and $397 million for garbage transfer stations. It's even less than the $160 million the city will spend planting trees! "We’re confident that this project will create tens of thousands of jobs over the next 30 years, and is one of the smartest investments that we can make in our future," Bloomberg said of the science campus.
Bloomberg's budget [pdf] would reduce year-over-year controllable city expenditures by $437 million, a 1.9 percent decline from Fiscal Year 2012. Expenses not fully controlled by the city, such as pensions, health care, Medicaid and debt service, will rise by $2 billion, a 7.5 percent increase. According to the mayor's office, the city will spend less in virtually every major area of controllable spending except for education, where city funding will again increase. NYC has regained 65 percent of the private sector jobs lost during the recession, and Bloomberg expects the city to recover all jobs lost during the recession by the end of 2013, one year sooner than the rest of the country.
But the budget does include 140 layoffs in the transportation and health departments, and according to the Times, some critics say the budget should have taxes on the wealthiest as a way to spare cuts to programs that benefit the poor. James Parrott, deputy director and chief economist of the labor-backed Fiscal Policy Institute, criticized Bloomberg's budget for not doing enough to alleviate poverty, telling the Times, "What it reflects, I think, more than anything else is that the mayor is just running out of gas,. The budget itself is in good enough position that there’s not a budget crisis, but the mayor is also not initiating anything to address some of the lingering problems that are out there."
Tagged
budget 2013
city budget
mayor bloomberg
nyc
trees
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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