Waste of the Day: NYC Service Cuts Due To $7 Billion Budget Gap, Migrants

This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire

By Adam Andrzejewski
Real Clear Wire

New York City taxpayers will see their own services cut — police, schools, sanitation, libraries — in lieu of paying the massive bill of caring for an estimated 143,000 migrants.

City officials predict it will spend $11 billion on housing migrants over the next two years.

Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city’s $7 billion budget gap — due in large part to the cost of housing and feeding migrants and the reduction in federal aid for COVID — will mean 5% cuts across the board at city agencies.

Most importantly, a freeze in hiring at the NYPD will drop the number of police officers to its lowest since the 1990s, CBS News reported.

Thirty years of progress in public safety could be gone in a flash, as the next five classes at the police academy will be canceled, without information on when they would resume. There are typically four classes each calendar year.

That will drop the number of officers from 33,541 to about 29,000 in the fiscal year starting next July. That’s the lowest number of cops since the 1990s.

Mid-year budget cuts to schools will result in cuts to the universal pre-K and 3-K programs, with an undetermined number of the 37,000 vacant slots left unfilled.

Residents can expect to see dirtier streets, as there will be fewer litter baskets, mostly in the outer boroughs and residential areas, while there will be cuts to sanitation programs to clean pedestrian areas, greenways, empty lots and other areas, CBS News reported.

Hours will be reduced at libraries throughout the city, including ending all Sunday services, news outlet The City reported.

Members of the NYC Council Common Sense Caucus have pushed back against Adam’s statements that the city is obligated to provide shelter to the migrants, calling the crisis “self-created, the result of decades of terrible policies and irresponsible decisions.”

They have challenged Adam’s claim that the city’s right-to-shelter law requires the city to “house, feed and provide every service imaginable to foreign nationals at our taxpayers’ expense.”

The city is in court after Adams tried to limit the law in certain circumstances, but was sued by homeless rights advocates. Gov. Kathy Hochul has backed Adams’ effort to limit the law, saying the rule was never meant to “house literally the entire world.”

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