Mayor Eric Adams proposed a nearly $112 billion spending plan on Wednesday that reverses unpopular cuts to schools and police, fire and sanitation services but leaves libraries with a multimillion-dollar hole that will mean continued Sunday closures at nearly all branches.
Adams entered the 2025 budget cycle facing a costly migrant crisis and the expiration of billions of dollars in federal pandemic aid, and voiced dire predictions about pending cuts to city services that drew outcry from local lawmakers and the public. But a resilient economy and better-than-expected tax revenues have so far cushioned the blow.
His latest executive budget, which is subject to negotiations with the City Council, adds $2 billion in spending compared to his preliminary plan in January. The mayor credited his widely criticized cost-cutting measures, which he said saved more than $7 billion across two years. In one example he cited, a controversial decision limiting the length of shelter stays for migrants reduced the city’s overall migrant spending by 30%.
“The measures we took worked,” Adams said in an address from City Hall. “We’re able to invest in the things that matter to New Yorkers in the executive budget, like public safety, early childhood education and the needs of working-class people.”
The proposed budget includes the restoration of a plan to add 1,200 new police recruits and gives schools and some pre-K programs an additional $500 million in funding.
As it heads into a final budget deal in June, the Council will try to wrest more money from Adams in areas such as education, where the executive budget did not fully reverse cuts. Many councilmembers criticized the mayor for his across-the-board cuts last year and argued that his budget officials were vastly underestimating tax revenues.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Justin Brannan, chair of the finance committee, said in a statement on Wednesday that the mayor’s new plan “begins to reverse a fraction of previous cuts that have proven harmful to our city’s stability.” But they added that “significant work remains ahead to ensure a city budget that advances the health, safety and strength of our communities.”
According to the Council’s analysis, Adams’ proposal could eliminate as many as 15,000 pre-K seats. The mayor repeatedly said on Wednesday that every parent seeking a seat for their child would receive one but the program needed to be run more efficiently.
City Comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement that Adams’ budget “shows signs of a brighter fiscal future for New Yorkers — if we can achieve the strong management needed to deliver it.” He urged the mayor and Council to restore funding to CUNY, which he called the city’s “best driver of economic mobility.”
In addition to education cuts, the city’s shrinking spending on libraries has drawn sharp backlash from elected officials and the public. A $24 million cut last fall prompted virtually all neighborhood branches to close on Sundays and drop down to six-day-a-week service.
The three library systems, which serve all five boroughs, are perennially on the chopping block. In January, they staved off a round of cuts after Adams said he would spare them in the current year.
But the library systems say the majority of their branches could go down to five-day-a-week service if further proposed cuts are implemented in the city’s next fiscal year, which begins in July.
When asked about the decision to leave the cuts in place, Adams blamed library administrators for not coming up with a better cost-cutting strategy.
“They did an analysis of what services they’re going to deliver to New Yorkers, and they had the options of finding where they wanted to find those savings,” he said. “All of us had to dig deeper. And some of our libraries have substantial endowments.”
Endowment funds tend to be earmarked for certain programs. The libraries have also argued that the city is legally obligated to cover their operating expenses under a historic agreement from 1901.
The heads of the three library systems released a statement on Wednesday expressing their disappointment with Adams’ decision.
“New Yorkers rely on the vital services we provide, and data shows library usage is continuing to climb in key metrics, including visits and program participation,” said Linda Johnson, Anthony Marx and Dennis Walcott. “The $58.3 million in cuts that libraries are facing, if enacted, threaten to upend much of the progress we’ve made over the past few years, and will severely impact vulnerable communities who need our services the most.”
Recent data suggests the city’s economy continues to rebound after the COVID-19 pandemic. The city added 300,000 new jobs over the last two years, according to the mayor, and projected city tax revenues rose by more than $600 million in the current year and $1.7 billion in 2025.
But experts say the recovery has been uneven, with the poorest New Yorkers facing higher rents and inflation without substantial wage increases.
Conservative budget experts said Adams’ latest plan massively underbudgets future expenses, including police overtime, rental subsidies for low-income New Yorkers and a mandate to decrease school class sizes in the coming years.
“Traditionally there were always some functions underbudgeted,” said Andrew Rein, president of the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission. “But they are getting bigger and there are more of them.”
“If we’re going to add spending, they have to be on priority programs and something else has to give,” he added.
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli criticized the mayor for not adding money to the city’s rainy-day reserves, saying it “underlines the lack of a systematic process to buffer against future uncertainty.”
In a stark contrast to last year, Adams did not sound a fiscal alarm over the ongoing migrant crisis, although he did urge the federal government to help the city “fulfill its responsibility” to new arrivals.
The city estimates spending $5 billion for migrants in 2025. Roughly half of that will be covered by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget, which state lawmakers passed last weekend.
“Overall, the situation looks to be stabilizing,” said George Sweeting, a fiscal policy expert at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs.
Still, the city faces some serious challenges. Its shelter system has nearly doubled in residents since migrants from the U.S. southern border began arriving in large numbers in the spring of 2022.
“That’s probably not where you want to wind up long term,” Sweeting said. “You want to get people housed in more permanent arrangements. And there are still a lot of services that those people need.”