Photos: YouTube Screenshots
NEW YORK – In response to news that Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Council Speaker had agreed to a handshake deal on the New York City FY2025 budget, The People’s Plan released the following statement from Director Zara Nasir:
“Year after year since Mayor Adams has taken office, we have seen more and more cuts to our most essential services, threatening children, parents, teachers, and seniors across the city. This budget doesn’t come close to stopping the bleeding – and even a budget that restored all of the Mayor’s cuts wouldn’t be enough. We need a budget that invests in our communities – not one that robs them of critical programs, especially when New Yorkers are facing a historic affordability crisis.
It’s already near-impossible to live in New York if you don’t have millions in the bank. Working families are feeling the squeeze in every direction, from rising rents to the exploding cost of childcare. It’s no wonder that more and more poor and working-class New Yorkers are choosing to leave the city altogether – and if we don’t act soon, New York will become merely a playground for the rich. Unfortunately, Mayor Adams has done nothing but made these crises worse by raising rents and cutting essential services.
With our allies in the City Council, we were able to claw back part of the funding for #HomesNow ($70M), key education programs ($40M), CUNY PEGs ($15M), childcare and early education ($120M), and libraries ($53.3M). But out of our People’s Budget funding proposal of $1B, only $300M was restored or invested in due to Mayor Adams’ budget games. CUNY and universal childcare in particular were shortchanged, meaning parents and future generations of children have been robbed of the critical resources that New Yorkers need to stay in this city. To add insult to injury: Mayor Adams’ refused to further invest in housing and library capital funding in order to build a $225M cop city in Queens. New Yorkers deserve better than the cuts and criminalization Mayor Adams is forcing on us.
This year’s budget cycle may be over, there’s still more work to be done. It’s clear that standard negotiations can no longer work with this administration. For the past three years, Mayor Adams has done everything in his power to kneecap the process, including putting out laughably low revenue figures this year to justify his cuts and stonewall good-faith negotiations with the City Council. We can’t trust him to deliver a budget that is enough for New Yorkers.
The City Council has stronger powers to amend and pass alternative budgets that it can use to overrule the Mayor, and it has used them in exceptional circumstances before. It’s time to tap into those powers again. We look forward to fighting hard with the City Council for the next set of budget modifications and next year’s budget.”
