Eight months after ordering most city agencies to dramatically cut their spending, Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday unveiled a $111.6 billion budget plan that restores some slashed funding — but still leaves areas such as the city’s public libraries on the chopping block.
Hizzoner’s Fiscal Year 2025 executive spending plan clocks in at roughly $2 billion more than his preliminary budget released in January and $4 billion greater than this year’s adopted budget.
The plan’s release kicks off another round of City Council hearings examining it and negotiations between the two sides of City Hall to agree on a final budget, which must be passed by June 30.
The mayor, during a livestreamed speech on Wednesday, said his executive budget resulted from his administration’s “prudent and strategic fiscal approach” that both “stabilized” the city’s finances, while addressing his core priorities.
“The executive budget speaks volumes about our core priorities: public safety, a stronger economy, and a more livable city for working class people,” the mayor said.
The mayor celebrated the plan’s restorations to areas where he previously slashed funding, including the city’s public schools, child care programs, police academy classes and cultural institutions.
“We have successfully stabilized our city’s financial outlook. By maintaining key education programs invested in more police officers, helping asylum seekers take next steps in their journeys and delivering the working class people,” Adams said.
But it notably does not restore the $58.6 billion in cut funding for the city’s three public library systems, according to a City Council member who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And still includes $7.2 billion in spending reductions between Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025.
The restorations come after the mayor announced three rounds of 5% cuts to balance the budget, due to increased spending on the migrant crisis, last September. Since then the mayor has slowly walked back across-the-board trims he enacted in November and January and canceled a third round planned for the executive budget.
The City Council has long held the cuts were not necessary in the first place because the city had enough money coming in revenue to make up for what it has been spending on the migrant influx, as the body’s revenue projections are often higher than City Hall’s. The council earlier this month identified over $6 billion in revenue, unspent money and in-year reserves that must be spent — an amount they contend is enough money to reverse all of the mayor’s cuts.
