What The City Budget Means For Forest Hills

Late Tuesday evening, the City Council was scheduled to approve its Fiscal Year 2012 budget after months of debate. The budget—one of the most contentious in years for the council and the mayor’s office—was the subject of protests throughout the city, as hundreds of organizations in Queens and the other four boroughs worried that they could lose millions of dollars in funding.

Even Forest Hills’ Councilwoman, Karen Koslowitz, called the situation “very, very bad.”

At the end of the process, however, Koslowitz said she was pleased overall that many of the threatened cuts were avoided.

“This year we again faced tough choices in agreeing to the city budget. I am pleased that I was able to fund key programs in our community and that we averted teacher layoffs and firehouse closings,” Koslowitz said in a statement.

Koslowitz also gave credit to Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and said that while the city made some tough choices, the final budget would ultimately in the city’s best interest. “Although cuts were made that will be quite painful, we avoided a total budget catastrophe this year,” she said.

Here are just a few highlights of the budget, including some of the local groups Koslowitz chose to fund out of her discretionary budget:

1. City firehouses will remain open. Closings were threatened at Engine 306 Bayside and
2. Teachers will keep their jobs. Teaching jobs were also on the chopping block across the city, . Those teaching jobs are safe for now.
3. Local groups—including —were on the receiving end of member item grants from Council members Koslowitz and James Gennaro, among others. Some of the largest local member item grants were $32,000 from Koslowitz for the Selfhelp Community Services organization, an outreach group for seniors, and $35,000 from Koslowitz to Young Israel of Forest Hills.
4. The Doe Fund, which provides supplies and workers to clean city streets and sidewalks, received $46,000 from Koslowitz to clean up portions of Rego Park on a daily basis.