Mayor de Blasio and the City Council agreed Thursday on a $75 billion budget that expands spending across agencies, from putting 200 more cops on the beat to giving all middle-schoolers free lunches.
“It signals a new direction for New York City,” de Blasio said as he announced the budget deal — his first as mayor — with Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
The budget is $5 billion greater than the $70 billion plan the Council and then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg adopted at this point last year — a 7% increase that will draw scrutiny from fiscal monitors.
The final deal also is $1.1 billion greater than the budget de Blasio proposed six weeks ago, reflecting the addition of money from a union health care fund to pay for labor settlements, and the addition of more than $100 million in new services.
That new spending includes $6.2 million to hire 200 civilian workers for the NYPD, allowing 200 desk-bound cops to return to the streets.
“It’s going to have a very profound impact on the ground,” de Blasio said.
De Blasio and the Council also agreed to add $6.25 million to guarantee free lunches beginning in September for all public middle school students, regardless of family income — roughly 170,000 children.
“This will help keep our schoolchildren fed, allowing them to focus on learning and not where there next meal will come from,” Mark-Viverito said.
Both additions represent compromise. The Council demanded the hiring of 1,000 more cops and giving all schoolchildren a free lunch, but de Blasio opposed them.
Likewise, the deal added $50 million for “member items,” money given to all Council members for pet projects in their districts.
De Blasio had vowed to do away with the spending, which has been prone to abuse, but he relented. “I think the term they use in diplomacy is detente,” he said.
Other new spending under the agreement includes $17.5 million for city-funded summer jobs for teens; services for mentally ill inmates and to reduce violence at Rikers Island; $17 million to keep open 57 NYCHA community and senior centers; and $19 million to reduce violent crime in NYCHA developments.
De Blasio called the hike in NYCHA spending “very substantial,” saying it would pay for “more (police) patrols, more tenant patrols, a lot more youth programs — including late-night and weekend youth programs — that are going to make a huge difference.”
The budget includes previously announced spending increases to fund new labor contracts for city workers, including retroactive raises; to expand prekindergarten and after-school programs; to create affordable housing; to reduce the use of trailers for classrooms; to add child-welfare caseworkers; and to implement the mayor’s “Vision Zero” plan to reduce traffic deaths.
De Blasio and Mark-Viverito descended the staircase inside City Hall at 10:15 p.m. and sealed their agreement with a hug, a kiss and a double handshake before assembled reporters and applauding Council members.
For all the spending increases, de Blasio pronounced the budget — for the year beginning July 1 — “fiscally sound” as well as representative of the “progressive” values he promised to bring to City Hall.
Officials said a surge of revenues — thanks to an improvement in the economy — helped to make the expansion in spending possible.
“We’ve delivered a fiscally responsible, progressive, and honest budget that will have an enormous impact . . . while protecting our city’s fiscal health,” de Blasio said.
The Council will formally adopt the budget next week.
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