From schools to police to the fire department, New York City agencies have been told to sharpen their budget axes.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has asked city agencies to cut $500 million from their budgets this year and $1 billion next year, a high-ranking city official tells News 4 New York. Bloomberg asked his commissioners to make deep cuts in the city budget in response to the Wall Street financial crisis.
"The credit crunch which began over a year ago has worsened, and has led to increasingly serious losses on Wall Street," the letter that the mayor’s budget director Mark Page sent to city all agencies said. "Hopefully the recent market extremes will run their course sooner rather than later. However, the institutional and market changes in the finance sector are likely to reduce employment and taxable revenue from this sector well into the future. This will hurt New York City because of our reliance on tax receipts from this sector of our local economy. The generally worsening outlook for the national and international economies is also likely to affect our revenue."
It's not in the web story, but I just heard it on the televised report.
This year: $8 million cut from public libraries.
Next year: $16 million cut from public libraries.
Don't scoff at that.
New York City's public libraries are packed during economic hard times. That's where people go to access the Internet they can no longer afford at home. That's where they create and email their resumes. That's where they look up business information to target their resumes.
Ironically, during these times when public libraries are needed more than ever, they get their budgets slashed and that translates into fewer days open and fewer open hours per day.
Come to New York City during this budget strangling and you will see lines outside the main libraries before opening that rival the Apple Store.
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