Mayor Eric Adams’ demand for budget cuts of up to 15% across all New York City agencies could gut a host of critical municipal services, including trash pickups, afterschool programs and cops, experts told The Post
New Yorkers will have to endure a decrease in many city-backed services, including extra sanitation routes, Chris Coffey, CEO of Tusk Strategies and former aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, told The Post.
Mayor Eric Adams ordered city agencies to slash their budget by 5% Saturday. AFP via Getty Images“It just depends on how creative each commissioner is on how to do more with less,” Coffey said, noting OT hours for police officers could hit the chopping block.
Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, said that the latest round of proposed cuts by Adams would be a “doomsday scenario” for the city’s schools.
Slashing funding would translate into “a loss of after-school programs, larger class sizes — they’d have to cut everything,” Haimson said.
DSNY could slash trash routes and composting programs to meet the city’s latest budget cut mandate. Christopher Sadowski
The president of the city’s EMS union said that slashing emergency medical services funding will have “deadly consequences.” Getty ImagesAndrew Ansbro, president of the FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association, said the fire department is already stretched so thin the only cuts he could envision were “gutting everything in headquarters and all the fire prevention, recruitment efforts and everything else” besides the rank-and-file.
“You couldn’t close companies or not put out ambulances because we’re already understaffed and overworked,” he said. “I really don’t know where the money would come from.”
Oren Barzilay, president of the local union repping 4,000 EMS workers and fire inspectors, warned they are already underfunded and cuts will have “deadly consequences.”
“There are times the public has to wait half an hour to an hour for an ambulance, if not longer,” he said.
One longtime Brooklyn cop was astonished by the mayor’s orders, noting any NYPD budget cuts will mean fewer cops through attrition and gutting funds for equipment.
“They’d be cutting the budget for cars and I don’t know how they could do that because there aren’t enough cars right now,” he said.
Democratic strategist George Arzt, a former spokesman for Mayor Ed Koch, said New Yorkers will almost certainly see fewer hours or days libraries are open, and parks maintenance services will also be reduced.
Additional reporting by Susan Edelman.
