Boost ACS, Parks, Retiree Health
City Budget: Hold the Splurge

By RICHARD STEIER

A budget surplus that has grown to a projected $3.9 billion for the fiscal year that ends June 30 will allow the Bloomberg administration to increase hiring in agencies including the Administration for Children's Services and the Parks Department and add $500 million to the city's Retiree Health Benefits Trust Fund.

PAYING IN COMPLIMENTS: Mayor Bloomberg said the sudden surge in city prosperity will not lead him to deviate from the wage pattern already established by union contracts reached last summer. He instead gift-wrapped a tribute to municipal employees, telling reporters, 'There's a reason why the city works, and it's the 300,000 people that work for us.'

Mayor Bloomberg also proposed that the city increase school aid by $532 million in the coming year, double that increase in Fiscal 2009, and then double that amount over the two following years.

State Aid Phase-In?

Those increases do not include the $2 billion or more in new state aid that the city school system is expected to receive - although the Mayor said he thought Governor Spitzer would phase in that increase rather than immediately providing the full amount - under the decision in the Campaign for Equity case.

CHRISTINE QUINN: 'A more thoughtful process.'

Even as the Mayor touted the city's continued prosperity in releasing his preliminary budget Jan. 25, he pointed to a slowing real-estate market and potential budget deficits a couple of years from now to explain why he was proposing only modest enhancements in areas ranging from city services to a temporary 5-percent cut in property taxes.

And he insisted that although the city's pension costs will stabilize after having to boost its contributions to the five retirement systems by more than 27 percent during the next two fiscal years, that has not lessened the urgency for a new, less-generous pension tier for future workers.

"We have four tiers already and I think it's time for a fifth," he told reporters in the City Hall Blue Room.

Projections on the surplus for Fiscal Year 2007 have doubled over the past two months, with the prime factor being increased tax revenues from the sale of large buildings. That was a development "nobody anticipated," Mr. Bloomberg said, including officials of two other beneficiaries, the state and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He suggested this was a short-lived windfall, saying that otherwise "the economy has done marginally better" than expected.

City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. praised the spending plan, saying, "The Mayor has recognized that this is an opportunity to strengthen both the economy and future budgets."

City Council officials, who negotiated some of the agency enhancements with Mr. Bloomberg and will work with his staff to produce a final budget deal in June, also praised several of its initiatives.

No Sweetener for Unions

The Mayor made clear that despite the new money rolling in, it would not prompt greater generosity to municipal unions. Referring to the portion of his budget for collective-bargaining costs, he said, "What we've assumed is that the DC 37 pattern gets carried on, along with normal premiums for uniformed services."

District Council 37 last July reached a contract agreement providing 9.42 percent in wage increases over a 32-month period, with part of the increase an initial 3.15-percent raise that other unions previously accepted for a corresponding period. The latter two raises under that pact of 2 and 4 percent, which will both have been implemented as of Feb. 1, have also been accepted by other civilian unions.

The uniformed unions are in the early stages of negotiations in the current round of bargaining, with some still seeking contracts to cover past years. Most Mayors have given uniformed employees slightly better increases than their civilian counterparts, but it is tough to quantify what Mr. Bloomberg regards as an appropriate "premium" because the length of his pacts with uniformed unions has varied from those reached with civilian bargaining groups.

Staff Funding Assured

In agencies like ACS and Parks, part of the increased headcount for the coming year reflects an agreement Mr. Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced a day prior to his budget presentation to lock in staff additions that had already been made. Those employees until now were not listed as part of the city's "baseline" costs, leaving open the possibility that their jobs could have been eliminated.

Ms. Quinn over the past two years has sought to minimize the haggling with the Mayor regarding Council priorities that enhance services in areas from parks to the public libraries, believing that it led Council Members to focus on concrete areas that were popular with constituents at the expense of influencing long-term planning.

The baseline changes were announced as part of a press conference in Brooklyn dealing with a change in how cultural institutions are funded by the city, with a new formula intended to reward institutions for the work they're doing rather than merely perpetuating the amounts they receive, a process that often worked to the disadvantage of smaller arts groups.

'Huge Step Forward'

"Taxpayers deserve the most thoughtful, forward-looking process possible when we're talking about spending their money," Ms. Quinn said regarding both the baseline additions and the altered cultural funding system. "I think this is a huge step forward."

ACS can now count on a permanent funding stream for 592 Child Protective Specialists, supervisors and support staff who were added last year as a response to the problems highlighted by the death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown. The agency will also receive funding for 65 additional attorneys to reduce workloads in Family Court among other personnel additions.

There are 116 jobs in the Parks Department that are being baselined for the first time: 81 Parks Enforcement Patrol positions - which Local 983 of DC 37 vigorously lobbied for - and 35 Assistant Gardener positions. The agency is adding 208 jobs in other areas as well: 136 for maintenance work, 50 to staff the Flushing Meadows/Corona Park swimming pool and ice rink, and 22 for the Croton Reservoir Filtration Forestry Program.

Nearly 600 additional full-time employees are budgeted for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, but 534 of them are existing staffers being converted from per-diem to full-time status.

There are no significant additions being made to uniformed staff, although the budget provides for two new classes of Police Officers - meant to offset those who retire or resign - that are expected to bring the NYPD's total to 37,838. It had dipped to 35,672 by the end of last year before a new class of 1,142 officers was inducted.

The $500 million contribution to the retiree health fund buttresses the $2 billion which the Mayor and the Council established last year to comply with new requirements from the Government Accounting Standards Board that such future costs be covered. Any money deposited in the fund cannot be diverted for other purposes.

The city's capital budget does not include funding for a new Police Academy, in part because no decision has been made yet on where it will be located and when construction will begin. "It's an expensive proposition," the Mayor said, estimating its cost at $1 billion.

Kelly: Put It Together

The new academy will look to consolidate functions; currently the classroom training is conducted in Manhattan, police driver instruction in Brooklyn and firearms training in The Bronx.

"We need much more of a campus-like setting," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told reporters following the Mayor's presentation. "The facility we have right now is totally inadequate. The physical training is often done on the FDR Drive. It should all be brought together in one big-league facility, and that's the Mayor's goal."

When a reporter mentioned Floyd Bennett Field - where driver training and other police exercises are held - as a possible site for the academy, Mr. Kelly alluded to the difficulty of getting there by public transportation, noting that the facility would have to be easily accessible to the civilian staff that work at the academy as well as the recruits themselves.

The Mayor said that he placed a priority on the property tax cut because it offered relief to those who were hit hard by the 18.49-percent hike that he and the Council enacted four years ago to deal with serious budget problems. That cut, while extremely unpopular with residents, was viewed by the Mayor as preferable to making major cuts in services that would have included thousands of layoffs.

Pinch Pays Off

That saved the city from the sort of problems encountered in other parts of the country where officials "did not have the stomach or foresight or courage" to raise taxes, Mr. Bloomberg said. Now that the city's finances have rebounded so strongly, he said, "The people who stood by this city for the last five years are reaping the benefits of their confidence and investment."

Even with the city's coffers flush, he said, it was essential to focus spending increases on shoring up infrastructure, noting the problems the city encountered just 15 years ago with its bridges because routine maintenance work - including merely painting them - had been deferred beginning with the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s. The average public school, he reminded reporters, was more than 62 years old, which was what prompted the city to embark last year on a $13-billion school construction program, half of which will be covered by the state.

There was not much political mileage gained when the city completed work on the Third Water Tunnel - a project 50 years in the making - last year, Mr. Bloomberg noted, but "you've gotta invest in things that are not politically popular but are long-term necessities."

And while the budget gaps looming a couple of years look no more formidable than the ones for the past two years that have turned into handsome surpluses, he noted that the projected gaps for his first three years in office had turned out to be all too real.

"The ways to be happy long-term is not to go out and spend everything on one night of food and a few drinks," the Mayor said.