Mayor Prepares City for Deep Cuts

New York, NY —

Mayor Bloomberg says urgent steps are needed, to close the city's growing budget deficit. With a shortfall of one billion dollars this year...and a deficit approaching six and a half billion dollars next year...the mayor prepared the city for deep cuts in spending and new tax hikes. We have three reports starting with WNYC's Beth Fertig.

The mayor is proposing to cut more than 800 million dollars from city agencies this year. But that's just the beginning He says another billion dollars in cuts are needed next year. And he wants to reduce 8000 government jobs, using layoffs as a last resort.

But even drastic measures like these won't get the city out of the red. The slowdown on Wall Street has caused city revenues to slide. So Bloomberg is asking the City Council to approve a 25 percent hike in property taxes.

BLOOMBERG: We have to close the budget. And the alternatives to raising the property taxes are more severe cuts in the expense side. So much so that the quality of life really would deteriorate. The responsibility is mine to convince speaker Miller and all of his members that we can raise property taxes.

That may be a hard sell. Council Speaker Gifford Miller seems receptive to the mayor's other tax hike. Bloomberg wants commuters to pay a personal income tax that's now just for city residents - a plan that needs approval from Albany. But Miller says raising property taxes may hurt residents and businesses at a time when the city's economy is still recovering.

MILLER We're going to be trying to set a property tax increase rate that's lower than 25 percent, because I think 25 percent is too high, but we'll be discussing with my colleagues and the administration what is the right rate we can agree on and we will try to get every assurance that we can and then we'll spend the next year trying to get more help out of Albany and Washington because frankly New Yorkers deserve it.

Miller is also worried about deep cuts in city services. Education would take a 200 million dollar hit under the mayor's plan. Bloomberg says classrooms would be spared, with the cuts coming mostly from central and district offices. But there are also cuts to fire houses, senior centers, CUNY scholarships, and daycare. And the mayor wants to postpone the recruitment of 1900 police officers reducing the force to 37-hundred officers.

Bloomberg says he's confident he's spreading the pain just enough so services won't suffer too much. But he acknowledges the cuts won't go down easily.

BLOOMBERG: People have a right to protest and I would encourage them to speak their mind but the fact of the matter is, we have to close the budget.

For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.

I'm Fred Mogul. One area that's already generating protests is the mayor's proposal to close or move eight fire companies. In Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, neighbors have been began organizing to try to save Engine Company 204. Carmello Constantino owns a deli around the corner from the station, and he's already collected around 200 petition signatures in just a few hours.
CONSTANTINO: I put the sheets in the store, the customers signed they're all local people you know, and so far so good.
Inside the station, the mood is predictably somber. Firefighter Robert Maguire says he knows the proposed cuts are for financial reasons, but he and the members of Company 204 still are still perplexed why their 133-year-old station, in particular, has to go.
MAGUIRE: I have no idea why they're closing us but the budget, huh, I hope that closing us down is worth the montey they're going to save.
Adjacent stations will have to pick up the slack, and Maguire estimates that response times for some residents could increase by several minutes. Retired FDNY chief Vincent Dunn is a consultant to departments around the country. He says it's especially troubling that nearly 50 companies will shrink from five firefighters to four.
DUNN: We did studies in the division of training in the 1990s, and when you took on of those firefighters away, it increased the time to get the hose line in position by 50 percent.
Dunn says the fire department only garners about five percent of the city budget - half the proportion it received 40 years ago.
DUNN: They say, Well, fires are down,' yes, but we do more than fight fires, and no one's acknowledged that. Emergency work is up. Responding to hazardous materials is up 40% this year. Our whole response has changed.
Under the mayor's proposed budget, five stations would close. Two would be reduced, each losing an engine company. And one would lose its firefighters but continue to house the battalion chief and his driver. Most of the cuts would come in Brooklyn and Queens, with one of the proposed closures in East Harlem. The Fire Department says it selected stations based on their workload, population density, proximity to other stations and a variety of factors. For WNYC, I'm Fred Mogul.

I'm Cindy Rodriguez, Mayor Bloomberg's proposed budget calls for the closing of 30 senior centers in all five boroughs, and reducing a meals-on-wheels program in Staten Island. Under the proposed plan the department would also have to completely eliminate weekend meals for seniors and close the remaining centers one day per week. Some seniors still trying to digest the news are preparing for the worst.

News of the proposed cuts spread quickly. Like Cobble Hill residents fighting to keep open a neighborhood firehouse, the seniors at a Lower East Side senior center have started a protest petition. Pat Cauldwell, who works at the center, reads the handwritten message scrawled across about 20 signatures.

CAULDWELL: Our senior citizens, parents and grandparents have to survive when no one cares...it's about time somebody cared for those who paid their dues.

The Lower East Side Senior Program is not one of the centers slated to be shut down but it would face a reduction in services including weekend meals, something that several residents said they relied on. Connie Wilkerson is holding two white bags that she says are similar to what she is given on Friday to last the weekend. There's fruit, juice and milk in one bag:

WILKERSON: and then in the other bag I have my bread and I have my butter so this is what we get on Fridays.

Wilkerson is a young 76 and says she'll manage if the weekend meal is cut. Some though are more worried. Ian Hardcastle lives alone, is unable to cook for himself and says he can't eat out because it's too expensive.

HARDCASTLE: I don't know what would help me through the night I get hungry at night at two or three o'clock in the morning I feel hunger pains and I ain't got nothing in the icebox-- I'll have to wait until the senior citizen opens in the morning.

The commissioner of the Department for the Aging, Edwin Mendez Santiago, says the agency tried to cut the programs that are used the least, like weekend meals. And he says there are alternatives for the more vulnerable seniors:

SANTIAGO: Any senior who is in such a need that they can't give up the weekend meal, our case management agency should be involved to find other alternatives for them including our home delivered meals program that we're not cutting.

Santiago says all centers were notified yesterday by fax of the proposed cutbacks. If the Mayor's budget is approved, weekend meals could go as early as January 1st.

For WNYC: I'm Cindy Rodriguez