NEW YORK, New York – Several Caribbean legislators and advocacy groups have denounced New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s budget modification plan that they say will result in major cuts throughout various city agencies.
“Slashing funds from city agencies that offer our communities the resources and care that they need and deserve is wholly irresponsible and dangerous,” said City Council Member Rita Joseph, the Haitian-born representative for the 40th Council District in Brooklyn, in a letter to constituents on Thursday.
“The budget modification proposed by the mayor is reckless and insulting, and its implementation would result in fewer services for our neighbors and a city that is less safe and prosperous,” added Joseph, chair of the City Council’s Education Committee and former public school teacher in Brooklyn.
According to the New York City Independent Budget Office, the city has US$2.2 billion in extra tax revenue.
“But despite this, the mayor is proposing a plan that would gut libraries, CUNY (City University of New York), 3K, public schools, parks and social services,” Joseph said. “During the pandemic, libraries played a crucial role in supporting families and students alike. With high levels of poverty harming neighborhoods in all corners of our city, cutting social services is illogical and backwards.
“As the chairwoman of the Education Committee and a lifelong educator, the idea of cutting millions of dollars from CUNY and millions of dollars from the Department of Education is obscene,” she added.
Additionally, Joseph said she was “extremely distressed that the mayor would even contemplate, let alone propose, cutting Council discretionary funds, which support critical services for non-profits that are particularly needed in working-class communities like District 40.”
In her district alone, which is predominantly Caribbean, Joseph said she funds, among others, senior centers, organizations that fight food insecurity and legal providers – “all of which could be on the chopping block if the mayor succeeds in cutting these funds.
“These services from non-profits plug in the holes that government is not able to currently fill, and the loss of their funding will harm our neighbors in material and significant ways,” she said. “I condemn the proposal in the strongest possible terms, and I pledge to continue standing up for our most marginalized communities.”
In response to Mayor Adams’s letter calling for cuts to City Council grants to providers, the Council’s Women’s Caucus Co-Chairs Amanda Farías and Farah Louis, the daughter of Haitian and Bahamian immigrants, said: “At a time when access to abortion and reproductive health care are under attack, we cannot afford attempts to cut funding from the organizations that provide these essential services.
“Women still make a fraction of the wages men receive, and we know the non-profit service providers that support women and families are the backbone of healthy and safe communities,” said Farías and Louis in a joint statement. Louis represents the largely Caribbean 45th Council District in Brooklyn.
“Community-based organizations are filling the gaps in critical services that the government is failing to provide for all New Yorkers. Any suggestion to strip vital resources from the Council’s women’s initiatives is insulting and dangerous, especially after we took action to provide access to abortion health care through this funding,” they added.
“If we are serious about promoting maternal health care, protecting access to abortion and doula services, supporting survivors of domestic violence, and fostering leadership among young women, the city must honor its commitments to support service providers,” Farías and Louis continued. “Drastic and shortsighted cuts to committed investments will only harm and undermine our communities and their recovery, which we ardently oppose.”
The City Council’s Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual (LGBTQIA+) Caucus’sCo-Chairs Tiffany Cabán and Crystal Hudson, the granddaughter of Jamaican immigrants, noted that the Council’s historic funding for non-profit service providers in the LGBTQIA+ community has “ensured support for mental health services, programs for runaway homeless youth, and services specifically for transgender New Yorkers.
Hudson represents the 35th Council District that encompasses the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.
“We have fought to strengthen this support through budget initiatives, like Pride at Work, to help more New Yorkers access union jobs,” said Cabán and Hudson in a joint statement. “At a time when the LGBTQIA+ community is facing more homophobic and transphobic attacks, insufficient access to services, and the lack of basic safety, the city should not be seeking to gut the organizations our communities rely upon.
“The administration’s decision to target community-based organizations for draconian cuts is dangerous and cruel,” they added. “The LGBTQIA+ Caucus will not allow this mayor to shortchange our communities, and we will not waiver from our commitment to their health and safety.”
The People’s Plan, an alliance of dozens of advocacy organizations and community groups, said the proposed budget modification sent on Wednesday by Mayor Adams to the City Council for charter-mandated approval, “contains a series of severe cuts to agencies already in staffing crises, and greatly reduces budgets for public libraries and CUNY while leaving the NYPD budget nearly untouched.”
The Plan said the fiscal need for the pegs contained in the modification is “called into question” by the Independent Budget Office’s recent estimate of a $2.2 billion dollar surplus for FY23.
A statement from the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York said that savings reflected in this November Financial Plan reduce the next fiscal year’s budget deficit by more than $1 billion, bringing it down to a manageable $2.9 billion.
“The city faces significant economic headwinds that pose real threats to our fiscal stability, including growing pension contributions, expiring labor contracts, and rising health care expenses,” said Adams said in a statement. “And we are taking decisive actions in the administration’s first November Financial Plan to meet those challenges.”
