Adams Scraps His Trash, Parks Cuts In Second Budget Reversal This Week

NEW YORK CITY — A controversial proposed budget cut that would have taken 9,000 litter baskets off New York City's streets has been scrapped, said Mayor Eric Adams.

For the second straight day, Adams on Thursday said he'll reverse some unpopular mid-year cuts to city services in part because of lower-than-expected costs for the migrant crisis.

The city's sanitation and parks departments will join the NYPD and FDNY in having some cuts rolled back, Adams said.

"Today, I'm happy to announce that we will be able to restore funding for DSNY's litter basket service," he said.

The rollback will keep 9,000 out of 23,000 litter baskets on the streets, said sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

The planned cuts would have been devastating, both for the city's cleanliness and Tisch's own well-being, she joked.

"In fact, you can say I was a total basket case," she said.

Adams also announced that the cuts to the Parks department's Parks Opportunity Program, a job training for thousands of low-income New Yorkers.

The reversals come to cuts that many city lawmakers contend shouldn't have been made in the first place.

Council Member Justin Brannan, after Wednesday's rollbacks to police and fire cuts, said the moves should leave New Yorkers with more questions than answers.

"The mayor is doing a budget dance with himself, and his rhetoric is out of step with the math," he said in a statement. "All of a sudden, the mayor has found money, with irrationally shifting explanations and numbers, cutting into the credibility of his narrative that the City has an insurmountable budget gap that demands overly broad cuts."

When the Mayor announced the mid-year cuts back in November, many city electeds questioned city hall's math and said the Mayor's severe mid-year belt-tightening was "unnecessary," citing the same reasons— lower migrant costs than touted by city hall plus higher tax revenues — that Adams credited with his decisions this week to partially cull his cuts to police, fire, parks and sanitation.

Adams shot back against a reporter's question that the cuts and reversals were confusing to New Yorkers.

He pinned any confusion on an "attempt" — by whom, he didn't elaborate — to give the impression that his administration don’t have good fiscal management skills.

"You say New Yorkers are confused? No, they're not," he said.