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City Libraries Launch Push to Beat Back Mayor Adams' Budget Cuts


At a library in Queens (photo: John McCarten/City Council)


The city’s public library systems launched a campaign on Monday to push back against tens of millions of dollars in budget cuts in Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed budget. Adams’ $102.7 billion preliminary budget for the 2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1, is now the focus of a series of City Council hearings.

For the past several months, the mayor’s budget moves have invited criticism as he pushed major cuts to city spending. Ahead of a mid-year November modification to the current fiscal year’s budget, he announced a Program to Eliminate the Gap (PEG), to find cuts and savings worth 3% across most city agencies in the current fiscal year and 4.75% in the next three fiscal years.  

For the city’s three public library systems, with 200 branches across the city, and the city’s Research Libraries, the 3% PEG meant a $13.5 million reduction in operating aid in the current fiscal year, which they have had to absorb. 

In the mayor’s preliminary budget for the 2024 fiscal year, the library systems together are now facing about $20.5 million in reductions, which they are hoping to reverse. They are also calling on the administration to baseline a $15.7 million discretionary one-shot allocation that was made by the City Council last year in its “Schedule C” that comes with the adopted budget, for a total of $36.2 million.

The realized and planned library funding reductions, among broader cuts at many city agencies, created an uproar in the City Council, which symbolically refused to vote on the November mid-year budget modification.

Many Council members, including Speaker Adrienne Adams and finance chair Justin Brannan, as well as advocates, service-providers, and others are now pushing back on the mayor’s preliminary budget and looking to restore much of the funding cuts before a budget deal is reached in June. Among the most-cited examples of proposed cuts that they are upset with are those to early childhood education, CUNY, and libraries.

“This is a serious threat to the ability of the city’s public libraries to serve New Yorkers at a time when we should be investing in these essential public institutions, not cutting them,” said leaders of the Queens, Brooklyn, and New York Public Libraries in a joint statement (New York Public Library serves Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island). “The good news is that New Yorkers love their libraries and are ready to tell the administration and the City Council how important libraries are to every community.” 

Adams’ preliminary budget, released in January, proposed an allocation of $150 million for The New York Public Library, nearly $114 million for The Brooklyn Public Library, about $118 million for The Queens Borough Public Library, and $29.1 million for the Research Libraries for a total of about $411 million. That funding is about $41.7 million less than the $452.7 million allocated for libraries when the current city budget was adopted last June and about $50 million less than the $461 million for libraries in the modified budget for this fiscal year.

But, as mayoral spokesperson Jonah Allon noted, the 2024 funding is likely to increase since it does not yet include state or federal funds that get passed through the city or any discretionary funding that the City Council could choose to allocate. (The library systems also raise philanthropic dollars, among other sources of revenue.)

The library systems say the mayor’s cuts are already hurting their ability to serve New Yorkers, and that future reductions will only worsen services. On Monday, they sent out an email blast to all their subscribers, calling on everyday New Yorkers to sign letters to push back against the funding cuts. Leaders of the library systems will also headline a rally outside City Hall on Monday, March 20, before they testify at a budget hearing held by the City Council.

The Council has already expressed its displeasure with the mayor, repeatedly criticizing his budget proposal and specifically pointing to libraries as one of the areas where they intend to oppose any cuts. “Our libraries are neighborhood resource hubs that provide critical programs and services for New Yorkers of all ages in every community,” said Speaker Adrienne Adams in a statement to Gotham Gazette. “Funding for our library systems that enrich and improve the lives of residents are critical to achieving healthier and safer neighborhoods. The Council will fight to protect these community centers of opportunity and safe haven in the city budget.”

“Our libraries are always the first to be cut whenever we are in an age of austerity,” said Council Member Chi Ossé, chair of the Council’s Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations, in a phone interview. He stressed the important role that libraries have played during times of crisis, including providing COVID-19 resources and PPEs during the pandemic, hosting COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites, and providing services to the thousands of migrant asylum-seekers arriving in the city.  

Ossé also pointed to the December hearing where library officials pleaded for more funding to avoid cutting programs. “There's no more fat to trim, they were at the bone after those PEGs came into fruition,” he said. “I'm sure that at [next week’s] hearing, we're going to hear that we're touching marrow now.” 

“This administration has made critical investments in the city’s three library systems and recognizes the vital role they play in our communities,” said Jonah Allon, a spokesperson for the mayor, in a statement. “While every agency has been asked to tighten its belt in the current Fiscal Year in response to fiscal and economic conditions — including more than $4 billion in migrant costs by next year, the expiration of labor contracts that went unresolved for years, and skyrocketing health care costs — it is inaccurate to say we cut libraries’ funding in January’s Preliminary Budget. We will continue to evaluate their needs and work with them through the budget process.”

After the preliminary budget was released, Mayor Adams also sought to defend the proposed library cuts in a press conference, insisting that he was merely reducing budgeted vacancies without affecting services. His proposed budget removed 4,300 vacant budgeted positions across all agencies, even as 23,000 vacancies remain in city government . “I'm a big believer in libraries,” he said at the time. “What we're looking at are the vacancies…We are saying 50% that we want them to remove. And that's the same for our libraries.” The mayor’s savings program, however, very clearly defines the library cuts as “Baseline reduction to Operating Subsidy” rather than vacancy reductions.  

The library system provides a wide range of services to New Yorkers from traditional book-lending and a place to read to free internet access and English-language classes to early-childhood education and after-school programs, and more. Library officials had already warned the Council at a previous hearing in December that they will be forced to reduce service and staff if the cuts should go through. “We have become more efficient. But at some point you get to the bone,” Tony Marx, president and CEO of New York Public Library said at the hearing. “This may push us over the edge.”

Linda Johnson, president and CEO of Brooklyn Public Library, called the proposed budget cuts a “gut punch” in an email blast on Monday. “If these cuts proceed, we will be forced to make agonizing choices about shortening hours, cutting programs and collections, and rolling back services,” she wrote.  

Similarly, Dennis Walcott, president and CEO of Queens Public Library, said the cuts would result in “fewer programs, like storytimes, homework help, language classes, and digital literacy workshops, reduced hours at our locations, and fewer books, magazines, and newspapers. We cannot let this happen.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

NYCHA Officials Sound Alarm at City Council Budget Hearing


City Council Member Alexa Avilés leads the NYCHA budget hearing (photo: William Alatriste/NYC Council)


The New York City Housing Authority is facing a fiscal crisis as rent revenue has plummeted in the wake of the pandemic, affecting its operational budget, constraining its ability to hire personnel, and forcing it to suspend dozens of infrastructure improvement projects. Amid the city's larger affordable housing and homelessness crisis, the public housing authority is also struggling with a worsening ability to get vacant units repaired and filled with new tenants, a problem apparently exacerbated by Mayor Eric Adams' budget cuts.

At a City Council budget hearing on Monday, NYCHA officials outlined the dire situation facing the public housing authority as it struggles to recover its financial footing while continuing to make repairs and upgrades at its 175,000 units, home to nearly half a million New Yorkers and many in deep disrepair. The authority is in the midst of implementing a major transformation plan, while also complying with the mandates of an agreement with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to make repairs at thousands of apartments under the watch of a federal monitor.

“Our public housing is an incredible asset and a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who deserve healthy and safe homes,” said City Council Member Alexa Avilés, a Brooklyn Democrat and chair of the Council’s public housing committee, in her opening remarks. “But its beleaguered finances present existential challenges.”

“Every level of government can and should do more,” she added. “Each level is making active choices to defund NYCHA or minimally fund NYCHA. Every day this choice imperils residents and some of our greatest social housing assets.”

As part of NYCHA’s transformation plan, repairs and upgrades are being made at 62,000 apartments under the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program – which turns over developments to private management, allowing them to access federal funds under the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. Last year, Governor Kathy Hochul and the State Legislature also worked to fulfill one of Mayor Eric Adams’ top priorities, approving a new Public Housing Preservation Trust that is projected to help the authority raise billions of dollars for repairs for about 25,000 apartments. 

While the priority has usually been NYCHA’s $40 billion capital need for maintenance and upgrades to its buildings and units, this year the authority, its residents and their allies are more urgently focused on filling the hole left by tenants that have not paid their rent. 

NYCHA relies on rent for about a third of its annual operating budget and current tenant rent arrears total about $466 million across 73,000 households, up from $125 million in 2019. The authority only collected about 65% of rent it was owed over the last year, and had to dip into its reserves to cover an operating deficit.

NYCHA officials predict an operating budget of $4.4 billion for the 2023 fiscal year, with a $35 million deficit while again having to rely on reserve funds. That will also leave the authority with less than one month of reserve funds, though HUD recommends that public authorities should have at least three to four months of reserves on hand.

[READ: NYCHA Rent Arrears Crisis Shifts Budget Focus from Capital Needs to Operating Assistance, But Hochul’s Budget Includes Nothing]

“Without additional funding or an increase in rent payments beginning next year, NYCHA will have no choice but to significantly cut expenses and curtail repairs, including those related to the HUD agreement, which will have a real impact for our residents,” said NYCHA’s interim CEO, Lisa Bova-Hiatt, in her opening testimony to the City Council. Though she said the agency will undertake cost-cutting measures and expects to cover its projected deficit, that deficit will grow to about $57 million by 2027 if rent losses continue to mount. 

NYCHA has sought emergency funds to help its tenants. The authority applied for $120 million worth of aid for more than 31,330 households from the pandemic-era Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), a state program created with federal funding. But the state placed NYCHA residents at the bottom of the priority list, and not a single NYCHA tenant has received ERAP funding so far.

Rent arrears for those households have already grown to about $240 million. The agency is now looking for $330 million from the state to help cover lost rental revenue, though Governor Hochul included no new NYCHA money in her executive budget released earlier this year, which is now the subject of negotiations with the Legislature. A deal is due by the April 1 start of the new fiscal year.

When Avilés asked about NYCHA’s contingency plan if state aid does not come through, and whether they would ask the city for help, officials insisted that they do not want to let the state off the hook. “There has to be funding from the state for ERAP,” Bova-Hiatt said. “There has to be a way to protect affordable housing and our NYCHA residents.”

Brian Honan, NYCHA’s senior vice president for intergovernmental affairs, said the authority is working hard to lobby on the issue before the Legislature. “We feel very confident in our ability to make our case and I think we have made our case,” he said. “However, if that does not come to fruition, we will come right back to the Council, I'm telling you, on April 2, to present a plan B. I do not want to give that today because I think that we'll be letting other folks off the hook.”

NYCHA has several allies in the fight for rent arrear funding. The New York State Association for Affordable Housing (NYSAFAH), a trade group, and Legal Aid Society have proposed a $2 billion Tenant Fund for Affordable Housing (TFAH), of which, $500 million would be dedicated to NYCHA. State Senator Brian Kavanagh, chair of the Senate Housing Committee, and Assemblymember Grace Lee, member of the Assembly Housing Committee, have also called for $389 million in additional ERAP funding to cover both public housing tenants and those living in subsidized housing.

The State Senate and the Assembly will each soon pass a one-house budget resolution, likely this week, that outlines their priorities and help inform negotiations among the two houses and governor. NYCHA funding will be among many closely-watched items in the one-house budgets.

At Monday’s hearing, Bova-Hiatt said NYCHA’s challenges aren’t limited to rent revenue. There are other NYCHA costs that are out of its control including the rising cost of utilities and employee benefits, and the escalating costs of maintenance and repairs to the aging housing stock. To control costs, the authority has taken several measures including eliminating 145 vacant positions, cutting nonessential contract spending, and submitting an operating subsidy appeal to HUD to cover some costs of the HUD agreement.

Bova-Hiatt also ran down a lengthy list of capital repairs that NYCHA has achieved in recent years. The agency has about $2.45 billion in available capital funds for 2023 – including about $390 million in federal funds and $741 million in city funds, and other funds from previous years – and is expected to spend about $935 million. 

“While the capital funding we receive is only a fraction of the more than $40 billion needed to provide residents with the quality of life they deserve, we are making a difference with the money we do receive,” she said. There are currently more than 700 capital projects underway across the city, she said, including more than 250 that are under construction this year. The agency has also consistently met or exceeded HUD deadlines for allocating and spending federal funds, she said. 

She also outlined smaller projects backed by discretionary funding from the mayor, City Council, and borough presidents. She said that 72 such projects were expedited last year – 20 are substantially complete, 32 are under construction, and 20 are in the procurement or completion of design phase and will move to construction this year. But, she said those capital projects could be affected by the authority’s operating shortfall and the consequent staffing issues. 

“We are mitigating these impacts to the extent possible, but have identified approximately 70 projects that we must pause in the next few months as a result of our operating budget constraints, which are due to growing rent arrears, insufficient operating funding, rising expenses and staffing and resourcing limitations,” she said, though she noted that they do not relate to the HUD agreement and will not create health, safety or security issues.

Sounding a familiar theme in this month’s budget hearings, Council members also raised concerns about NYCHA’s staffing vacancies. Though the authority’s overall personnel vacancy rate is about 7%, vacancies in core operations such as heating, elevators, and safety services rise to 17.5%. “This is a problem,” said Avilés. “To get the repairs that tenants so desperately need, we need those kinds of operational staff.” 

NYCHA officials did insist that their hiring goals were manageable. “Out of 937 budgeted positions, only 696 have to be filled,” said Bova-Hiatt. “We actually think that that's a pretty achievable goal.”

As Avilés noted, the effects of the various challenges facing NYCHA are apparent in its Vacant Unit Readiness program. Wait times for NYCHA to turn around vacant units more than doubled from 182 days in January 2022 to 399 days in January 2023, and the number of vacant units increased from about 486 to 3,593 in that time. 

Council members seemed particularly incensed that Mayor Adams’ November budget modification cut contracts for the Vacant Unit Readiness program by 10%, a decrease of nearly $31 million over the next four years. “Cutting this program to get units back online amidst a housing crisis is simply unconscionable for residents who both need to transfer and for some of the quarter of a million people that are waiting on NYCHA’s waiting list,” Avilés said. 

Council Member Lincoln Restler echoed that point. “Could you just clarify for us how it's conscionable to cut this program when we're seeing such an extraordinary increase in the length of time that apartments are vacant?,” he asked. 

Eva Trimble, NYCHA's Chief Operating Officer, said that NYCHA “worked closely with [the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget] to realign the forecasts” of actual spending on the program, which involves making repairs to vacant apartments, including abating lead and asbestos. “We've worked with OMB to match the funding to our production volume and so we have never had a shortfall in funding to do the work that we need to do,” she said, while insisting that delays in turning around apartments also stem from stricter standards for housing conditions implemented in recent years.  

Restler, however, was dissatisfied with the explanation. “OMB is cutting us off at the knees and preventing us from actually being able to do the work that's necessary to fill these vacant apartments and get them inhabitable,” he said. “That's why I'm angry.”

Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog, also presented testimony at the hearing, reiterating recommendations that NYCHA should speed up repairs of deteriorating buildings, improve property management, boost rent collection and find savings and increased productivity through collective bargaining. In the testimony, Sean Campion, CBC's director of Housing and Economic Development Studies, noted that NYCHA's operating costs are increasing faster than those of comparable rental properties, even though the number of properties under its management has decreased. Overtime costs have also increased despite the authority's efforts to reduce them. 

Campion also pointed out that NYCHA has relied on non-operating revenue and city subsidies to balance its budget, an unsustainable practice in the long run. 

"While a balanced budget remains in sight for 2023, fiscal stability is not on the horizon. Ultimately, structural reforms, not just one-time bailouts, are needed to put NYCHA’s operations back on the path to solvency," he said.  

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Note - this article has been updated with testimony from Citizens Budget Commission.

Adams Administration to Launch 'MyCity' Portal in Coming Weeks with Child Care Services First


Mayor Adams (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign promise to launch the “MyCity” centralized portal for city benefits will soon become reality, administration officials told the City Council on Thursday. 

At a budget hearing held by the Council’s Committee on Technology, New York City Chief Technology Officer Matthew Fraser said that MyCity will be “rolling out in a few weeks,” initially offering a child care subsidy application portal before expanding to other city benefits.

MyCity was one of the signature proposals that Adams, a first-term Democrat, advanced on the campaign trail, as he criticized the city’s dysfunctional and bureaucracy-laden government and pledged a more efficient, tech-friendly administration.

The portal, he promised, would be a one-stop-shop for benefits and services. It would allow low-income New Yorkers to apply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), cash benefits, or rental assistance. It would help businesses cut through red tape to get licenses and permits. And, as the mayor promised in his first State of the City speech in April 2022, it would help parents and caregivers apply for child care. All among many other uses.

“We know that working parents don’t have time to navigate complex bureaucracy to get their children care, and we are going to make sure that city government works for them,” Adams said at the time.

In public interviews in December and January, Adams acknowledged that MyCity was set for a later launch than he might have hoped but called it one of his main priorities for his second year in office. “One of the top things I want to do is something called MyCity Card,” Adams said in a January 9 interview on WBLS 107.5 FM. “It’s one card that all New Yorkers can get the resources that they deserve so they'll know what's available to them. It's using technology. That's what this year's about, using technology to improve the quality of life of New Yorkers and continue to address the public safety issue.” (It’s not clear what Adams meant by “card” but the plan is for MyCity to be an online portal.)

At the hearing this week, Fraser updated the Council on the next steps for the MyCity portal after the imminent launch of the child care application. He said Office of Technology and Innovation is looking at “workforce development and how we bring people into public service, looking at small businesses and how they grow and interact with the city and get access to the services that they need and…looking at other things that live within the Health and Human Services umbrella to see how we can bring those into a common platform.”  

“The key here is as we move, over time, moving away from individual systems and bringing them into a single place,” Fraser said, referring to the redundancies that Adams often decried on the campaign trail. “It's like a snowball that builds mass as it goes downhill. It took a lot of effort to get the underpinning platform done. Now that we've got the platform done and we've got the first service, the things that come thereafter will come at a much more expedient pace.”

The development of the portal hasn’t been as quick as the administration originally envisioned. The portal was meant to be created in-house by the Office of Technology and Innovation, but was outsourced — following the pattern that many civic technologists and other experts have decried. After OTI predicted a rollout before the end of last year, it is now set to release the portal in a few weeks, 15 months into Adams’ term. The last hurdle, Fraser said at Thursday’s hearing, is “getting a seal of approval from our colleagues in state government whose subsidies are included in the portal.” A spokesperson for OTI would not clarify to Gotham Gazette what type of approval the city needs.

The state is likely to support the city’s efforts (and is working on its own more user-friendly government access points). Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have been close partners, particularly on child care initiatives. In the state budget last year, Hochul delivered on major priorities for herself and Adams including a $4 billion budget allocation over four years for child care services in the city (out of a total $7 billion statewide), an expanded income eligibility threshold for child care subsidies, and tax incentives for property owners to create child care centers and for businesses that provide employers with free or discounted child care.

At Thursday’s hearing, when asked by Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez, chair of the technology committee, about OTI’s budget priorities, Fraser said the agency is focused on “ensuring that we democratize access to city services.” MyCity is central to that goal. 

“A lot of the challenges that we face and what our constituents face is we have a bureaucracy that's overly complex to interact with, and figuring out ways where we can streamline and simplify that process is one of the things that we're focused on,” he said.  The MyCity portal “signifies a change to how we've done business historically, where we take the emphasis from the agency-specific service and we shift it to the customer, the person, the resident that requires that service.” 

Fraser detailed that the new portal will be effective in cutting down the time and effort it takes people to receive city services, while also reducing the workload of city agencies and the need for more staff. For instance, parents that want to access child care currently must fill out a 15-page form and submit it to one of three agencies, which then has to schedule an interview and request supplemental documents to determine the applicant’s eligibility. “So by digitizing the process, making sure that all those required documents are submitted ahead of time, it reduces the administrative burden on the people that are responsible for that task,” he said.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.



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