City Comes To Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Agreement
Mayor Bill de Blasio agreeing to hire an additional 1,300 police officers appeared to be the big ticket item as he announced that he and the city council reached agreement on a $78.5 billion Fiscal Year 2016 budget yesterday.
The budget comes a week early as the deadline for the annual city budget is June 30.
“This budget is a reflection of the responsible, progressive, and honest process we’ve built over the last year and a half. Our productive dynamic with the Council allows us to move forward programs that tackle income inequality, keep families safe, and lift up New Yorkers across the five boroughs, all while protecting our City’s fiscal health,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We’re strengthening the NYPD’s ranks, devoting new officers to counter-terror work and neighborhood policing, while securing vital fiscal reforms in overtime and civilianization.”
Other highlights of the budget include an extra $39 million for universal six-day library service, extended hours, and other improvements, new investments on the Department of Education’s Renewal Schools, which takes after charter schools in allowing for extended learning time, $17.9 million to phase-in breakfast in the classroom at 530 elementary schools, $6.6 million for the Department of Education to hire 50 additional physical education teachers and $2.4 million to expand CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), with a goal of increasing the community college three-year associate degree graduation rate from 12 percent to 34 percent.
De Blasio Adds Lunar New Year As School Holiday
Mayor Bill de Blasio, yesterday, announced via Twitter that the Lunar New Year will become an official public school holiday and day off, joining the Muslim holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, which the mayor announced in March.
The move comes as de Blasio has faced increasing pressure to add the Lunar New Year as a public school holiday inclsuing a state senate passage of making it a state holiday for all public schools and the assembly considering a simila measure.
It also comes as the state is still not decided on granting continued mayoral control of the city’s schools.
Rent Guidelines Board Cancels Rent Level Vote
With state lawmakers still divided over changes to the law that governs rent-stabilized apartments, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board postponing its annual vote on new rent levels until next Monday.
As KCP reported yesterday, the board was originally scheduled to vote on rent increases tomorrow, but with the law that governs rent increases for the city’s more than one million rent-stabilized apartments having expired June 15, the board thought it better to wait.
The board meeting has been rescheduled for 6 p.m., June 29 at the Great Hall at Cooper Union in Manhattan.
Cymbrowitz, Savino Bill Saves Seniors & Disabled
Sheepshead Bay Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz and Southern Brooklyn State Senator Diane Savino saw their bill to help about 5,000 seniors and disabled residents who were wrongly disqualified from the city’s Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) and Disabled Rent Increase Exemption (DRIE) programs pass both houses and is now headed to Governor Cuomo for his signature.
“As New York City is currently doing outreach to get New Yorkers enrolled in the rent freeze program, it was simultaneously dropping seniors and people with disabilities through no fault of their own,” said Cymbrowitz, Chair of the Aging Committee.
“This bill will make sure that if your rent was frozen, it will be stay frozen. I’m proud to have written and passed this legislation with my colleague, Senator Diane Savino, and to help ensure that housing stays affordable for our constituents and all New Yorkers,” he added.
Due to a glitch by the NYC Department of Finance, which administers the SCRIE/DRIE program, thousands of seniors and people with disabilities were determined to either be paying too little in rent or declared ineligible for the program. Rather than penalize those people who reapplied for the program and followed the applicable guidelines, the bill will grandfather them into the program with their frozen rent as of January 1, 2015.
In addition, starting July 1, 2015, the Legislature raised the income limit for SCRIE/DRIE to $50,000. Within months of this change taking effect, people were dropped from the program because their income rose above $29,000, the old threshold, but were re-determined to be eligible under the new $50,000 limit. Because these individuals ended up with a higher frozen rent, this bill would create a bridge for them.
