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Queens officials this month added their two cents to the proposed City budget and are asking for an additional $300 million-plus to be included to address the borough’s needs.
Borough President Helen Marshall and the Queens Borough Board have sent Mayor Michael Bloomberg a budget priorities package asking for additional funding to go toward a number of projects, including bolstering the borough’s police presence, maintaining six day library service and providing meal programs and homecare for senior citizens.
“The Borough Board urges you to ensure that the priorities contained herein be funded in the Executive Budget,” said Marshall in a letter to the mayor.
The City must approve a budget by July 1, the beginning of the 2008-09 fiscal year.
The mayor released his proposed $58.5 billion budget in January and, in February, the Borough Board held a public hearing where over 200 individuals provided input on the county’s needs. The board – comprised of Marshall, the county’s City Council delegate and the chairs of each community board in Queens – then determined which cuts could not be tolerated and forwarded its list of priorities to the mayor. While the board voted on the document, the City Council delegates abstained from voting as they will have to vote on the full budget, said Dan Andrews, spokesman for President Marshall.
“There were a lot of cuts, agency cuts, cuts to cultural institutions,” said Andrews of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed budget. “Hopefully, they [the City] will make some of the restorations.”
One of the priorities in the document is fully funding the Queens Borough Public Library system so it can continue to keep its doors open six days a week. The system just started keeping a six-day schedule last year.
“We’re very appreciative that the Queens Borough President and the Borough Board care so deeply about libraries and recognize the value of the programs and services we provide,” said Jimmy Van Bramer, the director of government and community affairs for the system. “And of course, they recognize the incredible importance of having libraries open six days a week so working families, students and seniors can use the libraries on the weekends, when for so many people it is the only time they can use them.”
Van Bramer said the system would continue to work with the mayor’s office, the City Council and Council Speaker Christine Quinn to ensure the necessary funding is included in the budget.
The priorities package also renews the call for a police precinct in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. A report recently released by the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks showed the 1,255-acre park had 99 reported felonies, from April 2006 to September 2007, more than any other in the City.
In addition, the borough board requested a new 116th Precinct to split the duties of the 105th Precinct, as well as new precinct houses for the 104, 108 and 110 precincts and additional officers in every precinct.
The proposed cuts to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development would have a substantial effect on groups that represent low-income tenants in housing court to prevent evictions and obtain repairs, said Cindy Katz, coordinator for community outreach and education with Queens Legal Services Corporation. The board requested these programs be fully funded.
“If the mayor is serious about decreasing the number of homeless and maintaining the affordable housing we have, cutting funds is not going to further his goal,” said Katz.
The board also requested $6 million be restored to the budget to ensure three child health clinics remain open.
“If a cut is going to eliminate a program, like the three clinics in Queens, we felt we had to work some way around that and keep those three clinics open,” Andrews said.
The board is also asking the City to restore $5.46 million to the Department of Aging for contract agency budgets, including senior centers, meal programs and healthcare.
The priorities package calls for money to be restored or increased in several other areas, including the Department of Youth and Community Development, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department of Small Business, the Department of Education, The City University of New York, The Department of Sanitation, the Office for Prevention of Domestic Violence, the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Office of the Queens Borough President, and the borough’s community boards.
To balance the additional expenses, the Borough Board proposed more than $800 million in revenue and saving options to offset the cost to fund the priorities package. Those proposals included an extension of the general business tax to insurance company business income, retaining the City’s share of the four percent sales tax on luxury items and consolidating the City’s procurement process.
“We hopefully will get a sympathetic ear from the City Council,” said Andrews. “We generally get some restorations. We are certainly hopeful that will happen again.”
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