'Death By A Thousand Cuts': Libraries, NYPD Face New Budget Slashes

NEW YORK CITY — A revised city budget announced Thursday includes significant belt-tightening for the NYPD, libraries and sanitation as the city faces a $7 billion budget gap, city hall officials said Thursday.

The budget cuts will hit other city services hard — including the city's Education department, which will shave off a significant cut, reducing its budget by over $1 billion over the next two fiscal years.

Meanwhile, the city's three public library systems will end Sunday service at the "vast majority of branches," according to library officials. The adjustment will begin on Nov. 26.

"Without sufficient funding, we cannot sustain our current levels of service," library officials said in a statement.

"We also will be reducing spending on library materials, programming, and building maintenance and repairs."

A hiring freeze for the NYPD could send the department plummeting to its lowest number since the mid-1990s, eliminating the next five classes, according to city hall officials.

Cost-cutting adjustments to the NYPD totaled $132 million in the 2024 fiscal year and $429 in 2025.

Reduction of overtime, elimination of vacancies and re-evaluation of light duty personnel will help the FDNY cut $92 million from its fiscal year 2024 budget, officials said.

For the city's education system, the cuts will mean cutting fringe benefits, reducing community school allocations and reducing early childhood spending.

The city's Sanitation department will also tighten its belt — most notably by removing some litter baskets from city streets and delaying the rollout of the curbside organics collection in the Bronx, city hall officials said.

City hall officials and Mayor Eric Adams continue to attribute much of the city's financial strife to spending on services for asylum seekers, reporting an unexpected $11 billion in added expenditures over the next two fiscal years.

Adams was recently in Washington D.C. earlier in November to discuss possible financial help from the federal government to help the city through a crisis that he has repeatedly said "will destroy New York City," but before any meetings took place, he hopped back on a plane to return to New York City when a crisis of his own unfolded, regarding a FBI probe into his 2021 mayoral campaign.

Comptroller Brad Lander said he found the Mayor's characterization of recent asylum seekers as untrue and unfair when it comes to the numbers.

"City Hall should stop suggesting that asylum seekers are the reason for imposing severe cuts when they are only contributing to a portion of these budget gaps, much of which already existed," Lander said in a statement Thursday.

"Scapegoating immigrants for those cuts is antithetical to the defining role of New York as a beacon of promise, inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty."

The New York Working Families Party also took issue with Adams attributing the painful cuts to asylum seekers, and emphasized the strain such sweeping cuts could have on New York City families.

"Mayor Adams is pursuing an agenda of death by a thousand cuts," said Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila, co-Directors of the party.

"At a time when half of NYC households can't afford the cost of living, we should be stepping up our investments in working communities, not defunding the services they rely on."