Bloomberg Releases Grim 2012 Executive Budget

Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered his Fiscal Year 2012 budget on Friday, and had some bad news for the city’s teachers, first and foremost.

Through a mix of attrition and layoffs, the city’s educational system will lose 6,000 teaching jobs.

The cuts don’t come out of the blue,

While local District 28 isn’t among the worst likely to be hit by the cuts, some local schools, specifically the Queens Metropolitan Educational Campus, could lose up to 35 percent of their staff.

Bloomberg sounded a familiar refrain when delivering his executive budget, saying that New York City was in better fiscal shape than many U.S. cities during a tough fiscal time.

“We are not immune to the realities in Albany and Washington. And the reality is, both places are keeping more of our tax dollars to close their own budget deficits,” Bloomberg said. “I am sympathetic to their need for budget cuts, but actions taken to close their deficits came without changing the burdens they impose on City taxpayers. We have to balance the budget and we’re not going to kick the can down the road.”

Bloomberg said the city would dip into savings to the tune of $3.2 billion to ensure that there will be no local tax increases, but that the next three fiscal years will all face multi-billion dollar budget shortfalls.

The mayor added that much of the culpability for the cuts had to be laid at the feet of the state and federal government, which have reduced city funding by nine percent overall in the last ten years.