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Mayor Adams' budget plan restores NYPD funding but keeps $58 million cut to city libraries

Chris Sommerfeldt and Michael Gartland, New York Daily News on

Published in News & Features

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams’ latest city budget proposal would pump more than $62 million into hiring new NYPD officers — but keep in place a similarly sized spending cut to New York’s public library systems that their leaders say could deal an existential blow to their branches’ ability to operate.

The executive budget for the 2025 fiscal year, which Adams formally unveiled in a speech Wednesday, comes with a total price tag of $111.6 billion — an increase of $2.2 billion over the $109.4 billion preliminary budget plan Adams floated in January.

Despite the higher amount, the executive plan leaves in place a combined $58.3 million cut to the budgets of the city’s three public library systems, a maintained spending trim first reported by the Daily News ahead of the mayor’s speech. Library leaders have said those spending reductions would force them to enact deep cuts to everything from open hours to social programs.

On the flip side, the executive budget restores $62.4 million in previously cut NYPD funding that would allow the police department to hire 1,200 new officers who’d be ready to hit the streets early next year.

Asked after his budget speech why he opted to restore NYPD funding over library funding, Adams called it a “tough choice,” but said he can’t “do anything in the city that’s going to impact public safety.”

“People that go to libraries, I want them to get there safely,” he said.

 

In his announcement, the mayor ticked off a list of budgetary challenges the city has faced in the run-up to releasing the latest spending plan — like the expiration of temporary federal funding for a variety of city programs, including education initiatives, and the unexpected cost of the migrant crisis.

Adams has for months argued he must slash city spending on various fronts in order to offset the tens of millions of dollars the city’s spending on the migrant crisis every month. He said Wednesday that the cost-cutting measures his administration has undertaken have “worked,” saving the city some $7.2 billion over the current and next fiscal years.

“We made smart choices, trimmed agency and asylum-seeker budgets and made conservative revenue forecasts. This, combined with better-than-expected revenues in a booming economy, resulted in a balanced budget and the stabilization of the city’s fiscal outlook,” Adams said. “We did not resort to tax hikes, major service cuts or layoffs.”

But City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and council Finance Chairman Justin Brannan said the executive budget leaves “too many cuts in place,” including for libraries.

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