Adams Backtracks: Restores NYPD, FDNY and some Trash and Parks Cuts to Budget

Facing continuing backlash, Mayor Eric Adams, who announced five percent budget cuts to all city departments next fiscal year back in November, has in recent days backtracked on some of the cuts to the NYPD, FDNY, Sanitation and Parks Departments.

The undoing of the cuts adds back about $68 million in costs to the fiscal 2025 budget at a time when Adams said he is trying to close a yawning $7 billion budget gap. While some unions and city council members said he had overstated the size of the cuts needed from the outset, Adams claimed it was careful fiscal management that enabled him to find the extra funds over the past two months.

Adams said he is restoring the next NYPD academy class for next April, which initially was going to be chopped. He also said he has found funding to return a fifth fire fighter at 20 FDNY engine companies that impacts several houses situated in Manhattan. In addition, 190 firefighters who were on limited duty or sick leave will not be forced to either retire or return to full time active duty. A day after rescinding the NYPD and FDNY cuts, Adams also said he was undoing sanitation department cuts that would have removed some 9,000 liter baskets that Sanitation Department oversaw and restored the Parks Department’s Opportunity Program, which provides job-training for low-income New Yorkers. The powerful municipal labor union DC37, which has 90,000 members and was a key ally of Adams during his 2019 election drive, had recently sued the Adams administration to block the latest cuts.

Adams faced furious backlash when he initially announced in November he was going to make five percent budget cuts to all city agencies in the next fiscal budget. Even after the restoration to some departments, The Police Benevolent Association president Patrick Hendry still says the NYPD is in a “staffing crisis”.”

“We’re happy to hear that the city is funding another Police Academy class, but the NYPD can’t hire its way out of its staffing crisis,” Hendry said in a statement. “We are still 2,700 cops below the pre-’defund the police’ headcount. Those who remain are stretched beyond their breaking point.”

While the FDNY cuts were more limited, they hit fire houses in the East Village, Midtown and Harlem particularly hard. “In a job where seconds matter, this will undoubtedly cost minutes,” said Andrew Ansbro, the president of the United Firefighters Association at the time. “This can be the difference between life and death.”

He told Straus News that the number of civilian fire fatalities in the city is up 60 percent in the past four years. “Can you imagine if the number of murders went up 60 percent in four years?” he asked. He said at a time when e-bikes and the general population is expanding that increases the danger of fires. Meanwhile the number of firefighters is down. “When firefighters are safer, civilians are safer,” he said.

Adams said he found the extra $37 million to reverse the FDNY and NYPD and $31 million for Sanitation and Parks Departments due to careful fiscal management in the past two months.

City Council speaker Adrienne Adams and Bay Ridge City Council member Justin Brannan. who is chair of the finance committee, said about the latest restoration: “Keeping our city’s streets and parks clean in every community is vital to the health and safety of all New Yorkers. We are pleased the mayor has reversed course on his own plan, listening to the Council and voices of New Yorkers to protect sanitation services and vital job programs. The Council has said all along the money exists to avoid overly broad cuts and protect essential services relied upon by our constituents.”

The need for the sweeping cuts Adams outlined in November was blamed on the ongoing immigration crisis.

Adams said from April 2022 until December 2023, the city had already spent $3.5 billion on shelter and services for over 168,500 migrants who had come through the intake centers. He initially projected that the migrant crisis was going to cost about $12 billion from fiscal year 2023 through fiscal year 2025. Now he is saying that the city is projected to achieve a 20 percent reduction in city-funding on the migrant crisis by the end of fiscal year 2024.

The biggest cuts unveiled by Adams at the time were to be from the Department of Education, where Adams wanted to chop $1 billion from its budget over the next two fiscal years. The United Federation of Teachers is suing to block the cuts. City libraries were forced to start closing on Sundays to accommodate the cuts, but over the weekend, he said he would not hit the library budget further, forestalling a move to close them on Saturdays as well.

Adams had staked much of his first election strategy by staking out ground on law-and-order issues.

“Public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity and so everything we do is to ensure New York City remains the safest big city in America,” he said in unveiling the restorations on Jan. 10. He again touted drastic cut in the murder rate last year, which dropped 12 percent, and a 25 percent decline in shootings as evidence that crime is down.

While five of seven major crime categories were down, grand theft auto was up 15 percent on the year compared to a year earlier and felonious assaults rose six percent compared to a year earlier. The crime rate when all incidents are tallied, actually fell less than one percent and is still higher than it was pre-COVID, according to the Compstat numbers from the NYPD.