The Gothamist reports that Adams’ newest budget proposal would cut $5 million from the meal delivery program starting in 2024, with more cuts to come:
It’ll be followed by another reduction of $7 million in the same time period, and a reduction of $5.6 million in each of the next three years, according to Council member Crystal Hudson, who represents parts of Brooklyn, including Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, and chairs the Council’s aging committee.
The Adams administration claims that fewer senior citizens are using the program right now. That is debatable, but what isn’t debatable is that the price of food and services continues to rise and cutting the budget would amount to an exponential reduction. Also not debatable is how many seniors live in New York City and how many more will be living there soon. About 20% of New Yorkers qualify as seniors, and the populous baby boomer generation continues to age while the population under age 65 has declined over the past 10 years. This move would really create a true Adams legacy of screwing over New Yorkers, young and old.
Adams ran on the myth that New York City had once again been plunged into the chaos of 1970s-era crime. He promised the kind of austerity that asphyxiates the social safety net while enriching the haves. Like “fiscal” conservatives before him, his plan includes underfunding important programs like public education, libraries, and health services, and then figuring out ways to privatize large parts of those services when they begin to fail under the weight of being overburdened and undersupported.
What gives away the game is who and what people like Adams are spending money on, and what costs they are “saving” in return. The Adams administration is spending tons of money to militarize the city’s police force while cutting budgets on social services. New York City’s 2023 budget for the NYPD is more than $11 billion. That’s one billion dollars … eleven times! And so much of that money seems to be wasted, even by “fiscal conservative” standards.
A few weeks ago New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released a report detailing how overblown the NYPD’s “overtime” expenditures are. According to the report, the Big Apple’s police department accrues most of the excessive overtime budget losses felt every year for the past decade. Through February alone, the NYPD has spent almost $500 million in officer overtime: This is nearly $100 million over the actual annual budget the department is allotted. Lander told Bloomberg:
“If New York City had unlimited cash, it would be lovely to allow teachers unlimited overtime to stay after school to help every kid learn to read, or social workers unlimited shifts to help counsel New Yorkers struggling with mental illness. But other agencies aren’t allowed to show total disregard for their overtime budget, and we can’t afford for the NYPD to do so year after year.”
In December, City Council Education Chair Rita Joseph told Politico that Adams and his surrogates can try and blame everybody in the world for the universal pre-K program’s “empty seats,” but it was still the mayor’s job “to deliver these seats because this has been a model. Whatever they’ve inherited … they now have to fix it.” Adams’ plan seems to be to starve it all and then police the predictable outcomes.
The data is in: Americans don’t like Republican policies on abortion. Kerry is joined by Drew Linzer, the director and co-founder of the well-regarded polling company Civiqs. Drew and Kerry do a deep dive into the polling around abortion and reproductive rights and the big problems conservative candidates face in the coming elections.