Essential Services Restored as NYC Budget Passes

The City Council passed New York City's budget for Fiscal Year 2012 (July 1, 2011 - June 30, 2012). Overall, this budget preserves essential services, preventing teacher layoffs, restoring fire companies, day care slots, and library services.  A few of the highlights are below, but please click here for more detailed information.

Restoring Essential Services

In his Executive Budget proposal in May, Mayor Bloomberg proposed a wide range of cuts that would have impacted essential services. The City Council  worked with the Bloomberg Administration to restore many essential services:

• No teacher layoffs, thanks to an agreement between the Council, the City, and the UFT.
• No fire company closures
• Substantial restorations to child care and thousands  of “Priority 5” after-school vouchers for families, albeit at a lower funding level
• Neighborhood public libraries will continue to offer 5-day-a-week service
• Restorations to the Parks Department will mean public pools are open all summer, and we’ll still have playground associate
• The Council also restored many smaller, but still important, programs – like those that help immigrants learn English, prevent homelessness, and offer legal and social services.

Also we are happy to report that the Council’s Autism Initiative was restored, which means Sinergia can continue its services to parents with children with autism. Sadly, even with these restorations, there will still be many painful cuts citywide, including the loss of over 2,500 teaching positions through attrition and the elimination of several thousand summer youth jobs, after-school program slots, small-dollar scholarships to CUNY students and day care slots for low-income working families.