Results tagged “fiscalyear”

Mayor Bloomberg is set to reveal details of his budget for the new fiscal year (which begins July 1), and like recent budgets, the economy's downturn means it'll be rough with the city's projected $4 billion deficit. WCBS 2 reports that, according to sources, "The mayor intends to raise $900 million to close the budget gap by raising the sales tax half a percent," and explains, "The sales tax in New York City will now be 8.875 percent; of which only 4.5 percent is a city tax. The rest goes to the state and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority."

There's good news and bad news in Mayor Bloomberg's latest status update on the city's performance. According to the mandated "Mayor's Management Report" for Fiscal Year 2009, major felony crime decreased 3% during the first four months of the fiscal year (July to October), while homicides rose 10.6% and grand larceny auto also increased, compared to the same time period in 2007. The annual report is an early indicator of how the city will fare this year; here are some other findings:
• Traffic fatalities decreased, from 112 to 102.
• The 311 customer service center received 12% more calls, from 4.78 million to 5.37 million.
• The number of trees planted nearly tripled, to 1,028, due to projects associated with the Million Trees Program. (Only about 999,000 more to meet the goal!)
• Less cacophony? The city received 15,275 noise complaints compared to 19,998 last year.
• The Department of Homeless Services saw an across-the-board increase in single adults and families entering the shelter services system, including an increase of 38% for families with children.
• The number of persons receiving food stamps increased by 18.1%. Among these recipients, the number of non-cash assistance persons receiving food stamps increased 25.8%, reaching an all-time high.
• The number of syphilis cases rose by 30%, reflecting national trends.

In addition to the performance report, the Mayor's office launched NYCStat, a website intended to be a "one-stop-shop" for all essential data, reports, and statistics related to city services. Here you can view cleanliness ratings for streets and sidewalks, peruse data from the 311 customer service center, and review additional performance measures at the websites of 12 key city agencies, and much, much more!

It was a good time to be a bill at City Hall this week as Council Members introduced stacks of legislation concerned with how we eat, speak, and party(bike) in the city.

The Mayor unveiled his Fiscal Year 2008 Preliminary Budget and was very upbeat, if cautious. Mayor Bloomberg said of the $57.1 billion budget:

“Because of our strong economy, tax revenues are running higher than expected this year. That’s good budgetary news, including $1 billion in tax cuts for the people of New York City. If conditions permit, we’ll propose extending that tax cut in the future. But with slower job growth and other indications of economic uncertainty on the horizon, it’s wiser to take a wait-and-see approach, while also putting $500 million more into our Retiree Health Benefits Trust Fund and using $1.4 billion to close the expected budget deficit in 2009.”

What's impressive is that there is a projected $3.9 billion budget surplus for this fiscal year, plus another $1.4 billion surplus next year, thanks to what the NY Times calls a "boom in property transfer taxes, including mortgage recording taxes, which can generate millions of dollars when large properties change hands." Well, at least the city is getting something out of the Stuyvesant Town deal.

Mayor Bloomberg released the 2006 Fiscal Year Mayor's Management Report yesterday. The MMR is the Mayor's way of being accountable for city initiatives and agencies, and during the press conference, the Mayor felt that there was still work to be done, saying, "Two-thirds of the things are going in the right direction. A third aren't going as fast as I'd like, or in the right direction.": Like what? The quality of streets has declined (which the Department of Transportation says is due to construction projects), the Civilian Complaint Review Board received 16% more complaints about police officers, structural fire response times increased and pest control exterminations dropped by 39%.

Before the City Council approved a $52.9 billion budget yesterday, they got their desert, aka Schedule C. Also known as the Fiscal Year 2007 Adopted Expense Budget Adjustments Summary[PDF], Schedule C is the list of all the Council's pet items that successfully were restored or added to the budget. And what a crazy list of pet items got through! It's going to take a bit of time to find the goodies in the 70-odd pages of the summary (if you find anything of interest, use the comments!), but Times newsroom juggernaut Sewell Chan has already started to charge through it:

The roster is encyclopedic, from the Afikim Foundation, which provides Jewish online learning ($35,000), to the Zeta Zeta Zeta Lambda chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, a national African-American fraternity ($10,000). It includes the Filial Piety Society of Sunnyside, Queens ($3,500); the Ghetto Film School ($28,500); the Russian American Voters League ($7,500); and the Sister Power Organization ($10,000).

Mayor Bloomberg swept into his presentation of the city's new budget with the confidence of a man who has a $50 billion budget with an over $3 billion surplus. The hot hot hot real estate market helped fuel the surplus, and the Mayor painted such a rosy picture of the city's health, even though there was a $1 billion accounting mistake (not counting teachers' pensions - oops!), that some say the Democrats are left to "pick for proverbial scraps" to criticize, with mayoral hopefuls trying to remain on the offensive, with digs at how slowly the WTC development has gone to the fact that the Mayor should have done more to close the deficit. But, the Mayor did caution a real estate bust could be problematic for the city's development.

The White House on the 2006 Fiscal Year Budget.

Representative Anthony Weiner says, "It ain't good. Not only does the Bush budget whack traditional urban programs like housing assistance, they are shortchanging us on homeland security needs." It seems that while funds for high-alert areas have increased, so have the number of those areas: "Charlotte and Fresno are considered high threat. I love the Charlotte Raptor Museum but if it ever becomes a terrorist target, we're all in trouble."