NEW YORK — Drastic budget cuts across several city agencies are now canceled.
Mayor Eric Adams said new savings on the cost of sheltering migrants will allow him to restore planned budget cuts and lift a hiring freeze.
He’s now the budget magician of City Hall. With an apparent wave of a magic wand, Adams has made the budget gloom and doom of three months ago disappear. All it took was higher-than-expected tax receipts, and a determination to cut the cost of migrant services.
“I would love to say that it was magic, but it really was about discipline,” First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright said.
Part of that discipline includes cutting the cost of migrant services. Adams announced another 10% cut in the asylum seeker budget. That’s an additional $600 million, on top of a previous $1.7 billion in savings.
“How are you achieving the cut?” CBS New York’s Marcia Kramer asked.
“Housing costs are the biggest costs, so the fewer people that you have in hotel rooms and other housing, that is a big part of the costs. We’re also being more efficient with other services and support. We’re saving money on food, security and other services,” Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright said.
Wright said that limiting shelter stays to 30 or 60 days has saved a lot, which has enabled the mayor to cancel the 5% agency reductions that were supposed to go into effect in April.
The city will also be able to lift its hiring freeze. Agencies will now be able to hire one new employee for every two that have left.
“That is huge,” Wright said. “The ability to have the skilled, wonderful workforce that the city of New York workforce is, to be able to hire and recruit and retain is really going to help us.”
The move won immediate praise from teachers union president Michael Mulgrew.
“We are glad our advocacy helped persuade City Hall to abandon its next round of proposed budget cuts. Now it is time to get the legislative changes we need so that in the future the city doesn’t reduce its investment in our public schools,” Mulgrew said.
Possible cuts to education are expected to take center stage when the city proposes its new budget in the spring.
