The de Blasio Administration today denied that the mayor cut a deal with the city’s biggest municipal union – trading their endorsement of his re-election for the creation of 100 new jobs in his preliminary budget.
De Blasio’s FY 17 city spending plan released Monday boasted of hiring 200 part-time school crossing guards and 100 full-time school crossing guard supervisors to ensure 100 percent coverage at all school crossing posts citywide through $5.4 million in FY17 and $6.3 million in FY18.
What was not mentioned was that there is currently no such thing as crossing guard supervisor positions. They are newly created positions reached in a deal between the city and DC37, the city’s largest municipal union. The new positions were worked out with the union while the de Blasio Administration was preparing the preliminary budget.
Two days after the preliminary budget was released, DC 37 announced the union’s rank-and-file was endorsing de Blasio for re-election upon a recommendation from its executive committee.
DC 37 refused comment on whether they made a deal with de Blasio concerning the positions and the preliminary budget. But de Blasio spoksperson Freddi Goldstein confirmed they worked on the school guard line item with DC 37 officials because the mayor, “wanted to ensure that every cross walk was covered and we needed additional labor for that purpose.”
“The endorsement was not part of the negotiation for this deal. This deal is about the safety of our children,” said Goldstein, adding this plan was formulated because last year there were stories about crossings with no guard covering.
“The Mayor and other officials were getting frequent complaints about vacant crossings from the community and realized we had to make this a priority, which no other administration has previously done. Our goal was to ensure, to the degree possible, that every crossing would be covered on every day,” she added.
Currently, supervisors of the crossing guards come out of the local local police precinct school crossing guard coordinators — who are Police Officers and often performing other functions in addition. When the school crossing guard supervisors are hired, the crossing guards will report to their new supervisors, who in turn will report to the traffic sergeants in the precincts.
The previous school crossing guard coordinator will continue to work in the precinct performing other functions or report back on patrol.
Goldstein said all of the hires budgeted for in the preliminary budget in total include 2,638 school crossing guards and 100 new supervisors total.
The school crossing guards are all part-time jobs. About a third of the workers are laid off during the summer months. Starting pay is $12.14 an hour that maxes out to $14.04 an hour after three years.
The full-time, year-around supervisor positions will likely come from promotions within the ranks of crossing guards and pay starts at $15.44/hr.
