New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ call for budget cuts of up to 15% across all city agencies has raised concerns about the potential impact on essential municipal services, as was reported in the New York Post. Experts warn that these cuts could affect critical services such as trash pickups, afterschool programs, public safety, and more, leaving New Yorkers facing a challenging landscape of reduced services, the report said.
Chris Coffey, CEO of Tusk Strategies and a former aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, highlighted the need for creative solutions from city commissioners to do more with less, the Post report said. He noted that the proposed budget cuts could impact services like extra sanitation routes and could even affect overtime hours for police officers, potentially impacting public safety.
“It just depends on how creative each commissioner is on how to do more with less,” Coffey said, the Post reported, as he noted that overtime hours for police officers could hit the chopping block…
Oren Barzilay, president of the local union representing 4,000 EMS workers and fire inspectors, raised concerns about the potential “deadly consequences” of underfunding these essential services, as was stated in the Post report. He noted that long wait times for ambulances are already a concern, and further cuts could exacerbate the problem.
“There are times the public has to wait half an hour to an hour for an ambulance, if not longer,” he said.