With just hours to go on the deadline, the New York City Council voted Sunday to approve a $112.4 billion budget that restores nearly all of Mayor Adams’ proposed cuts and adds about $1 billion to what he put in April had suggested.
The vote on the budget, which by law must be completed by June 30, came after months of bitter negotiations between the mayor and the council. The final result was 46 votes in favor and 3 votes against.
On Friday, Adams and the Council reached a deal that fully funds the city’s public library system, reversing $58 million in budget cuts and allowing it to resume seven-day-a-week service. Some of Adams’ cuts forced the library system to close dozens of branches on Sundays.
The city will spend another $2 billion on affordable and public housing, a development first reported in the Daily News, and will return $20 million to early childhood programs and make provisions to more rationally fund the city’s pre-K and 3-K initiatives moving forward.
“Reports of the demise of New York City have been greatly exaggerated,” Justin Brannan, chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee, told reporters on Sunday.
Ahead of the budget deal, which was concluded on Friday, the Council President said Adrienne Adams held rallies and exerted public pressure to reverse the cuts.
Even after the deal, the mayor was criticized for sticking to his cuts for so long. The council insisted that the projections showed that most of the cuts, including library cuts, were ultimately unnecessary.
Several council members criticized the mayor before casting their votes.
“By forcing New Yorkers to fight and scrape for the bare minimum, he continues to demonstrate his inability to properly govern the city,” said Assemblywoman Sandy Nurse (D-Brooklyn) before her yes vote.
On Sunday, the president announced the upcoming vote to cheers and fanfare, but added, “We must shift the focus from recovery to strengthening programs and services that we know New Yorkers need and deserve.”
Since last year, Mayor Adams has argued that the cuts were necessary to offset the city’s heavy spending on housing and care for newly arrived migrants.
The no votes included New York City Democratic Socialists members Tiffany Cabán, Alexa Avilés and Shahana Hanif, who called the spending plan “Eric Adams’s austerity budget” and criticized him for cutting the $11 billion dollar budget. NYPD ‘completely untouched’.
“Despite our city’s nearly $4 billion surplus, the FY25 budget is a patchwork of partial restorations combined with hundreds of millions in new and recurring cuts to vital city agencies and services, including parks, early childhood education, and CUNY,” the trio said in a statement sent to reporters ahead of Sunday’s vote.
Caban (D-Queens) criticized the NYPD’s “perennially bloated budget” and said, “This no vote certainly won’t increase my popularity with those in power, but my constituents didn’t put me in this room to act as some sort of stamp for a new Eric Adams budget.”
Still, the mayor drew praise from Assemblywoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens), who chided critics of the budget. “The select few here who can never be satisfied will drive us deeper and deeper into debt if they get their way.”
