Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially announced Friday the city’s $4 billion budget gap and unveiled a new budget filled with painful cutbacks that will impact every New Yorker.
“This is a very tough time for our city and nation,” Bloomberg said. “We have a $4 billion budget gap. It is serious, I think it is manageable.”
Bloomberg proposed the $43.4 billion budget Friday for the fiscal year starting on July 1 that includes heavy cuts in city jobs, cuts in services and increases in costs for everyday New Yorkers.
“When you talk about reducing city expenditures, you are really talking about reducing headcount,” Bloomberg said. “You can only get so much blood out of a stone.”
The mayor’s plan calls for a reduction of almost 23,000 jobs through layoffs and attritiion. About 15,000 employees would be laid off, including 14,000 Education Department employees, and 7,700 jobs would be lost through attrition.
The plan calls for a repeal on the sales tax exemption on clothing, raising the sales tax by 1/4 of a percent, raising parking meter rates and issuing more fines to unsanitary restaurants.
Bloomberg said Wall Street firms are expected to lose a total of $47.2 billion for 2008, and even more in 2009. The figures are devastating for New York City.
The mayor said Wall Street’s losses will affect the city for years.
The city is also now projected to lose nearly 300,000 jobs through 2010. Some 46,000 will come from the financial sector.
The gap for fiscal 2010 is at $4 billion and growing.
(Source: NBC NY)
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2 Responses
And this under the watch of a mayor who said he was putting away money for “a rainy day”.
This guy is a fraud. I think it’s time to cut this mayor out of the budget business instead of cutting the budget.
If these measures are being taken because of the difficuly financial times we are in, then the measures should be enacted as temporary ones. Otherwise, every crisis is just used as an excuse to ratchet up the cost of living.