New York, NY – The improving economy is boosting the city’s projected tax revenue by $2 billion for this fiscal year and the next one, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg is sticking with plans to cut the number of public school teachers by more than 6,100.
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Bloomberg’s administration said he would call in his preliminary budget proposal Thursday for eliminating 4,666 teachers through layoffs and 1,500 teaching jobs through attrition.
Those losses, representing roughly one out of every 12 teachers in the nation’s largest public school system, are the same cuts Bloomberg initially proposed in November in response to a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall.
The mayor’s office said Wednesday the city had increased its education funding by nearly $2 billion since June but claimed the cuts remained necessary because of deep slashes to state and federal education funding. The city’s combined tax revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30 and the one beginning July 1 is now projected to reach $81.8 billion, up from the $79.8 billion announced in November.
Bloomberg has been pushing the state government to allow the city to lay off teachers without regard for their seniority, arguing that merit is more important. Currently, the city is required to lay off the most junior teachers first.
United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said at the end of last month the mayor should be working with the union to prevent layoffs.
The budget being proposed Thursday is only an initial offering for the fiscal year beginning in July. The mayor usually makes a revised proposal in May, and even that may undergo further changes before the City Council votes on it by the end of June.
The city’s last budget, passed at the end of June 2010, was for $63 billion. It cut thousands of jobs from the city’s work force, trimmed city services and raised various fees.
Makes a whole lot of sense….Spend $500 million repainting the Brooklyn Bridge and then put 6100 people out on the streets looking for work. Is he for real?
If you don’t do the boring maintenance work like painting the bridge, it will deteriorate and become unsafe. Rebuilding it would be hugely expensive.
People, excuse me, “human resources” (humans are now a resource like coal and lumber), is usually the largest cost area. If you don’t control HR costs, you can’t control the budget.
The budget reality is ugly and some very tough, painful decisions are going to have to be made.
more important to spend 700,000,000 on Citytime that to keep city employees on the job.