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FY25 People’s Budget Demands

Core Demands

Invest in Public Infrastructure with Union Labor in the FY25 Capital Budget
  • Invest in Homes Now and for Generations. Invest $2B/4 years into HPD to preserve/build affordable community-controlled housing with union jobs. Secure $3.55B for NYCHA repairs.
  • Improve Public School Buildings. Invest $400M to electrify/upgrade 500 schools by 2030. Invest $1.25B/5 years to make schools accessible. Fund class size reductions, required by law.
  • Invest in CUNY Infrastructure. Invest $545.5M for improvements in community colleges.
Invest in Essential Services & #CareNotCuts for *All* New Yorkers in the FY25 Expense Budget
  • Invest in Public Education: Save key education and youth programs on the chopping block due to $1B in expiring federal funds or city cuts. No cuts to school budgets or cuts to education.
  • Invest in CUNY. Baseline $35.5M in funding for advisors to move toward ASAP for all. Free Metrocards for all students. Restore $94M in cuts so CUNY can hire back faculty and staff.
  • Invest in Childcare: Recommit to universal 3K, Pre-K, and childcare. Fund extensive outreach and advertising. Salary parity for early childhood workforce. Restore cuts of $400M to childcare.
  • Invest in Social Safety Nets, Health, and Housing. Invest in housing and services for all, regardless of legal or immigration status, and service workforces. No cuts to service provision.
  • Invest in Libraries: Invest in library services and no cuts to libraries. Restore $130M in capital and ​​$58.3M in expense funding cut by Mayor Adams’ prior budget cuts and weekend service.
Divest from Criminalizing New Yorkers & Wasteful Spending in the FY25 Expense Budget
  • Divest from harmful policing, NYPD overspending. Cut vacancies. Freeze officer hiring for DOE, DPR, DHS, NYPD  “co-response” teams. Disband SRG. Cut DCPI/NYPD comms by 50%.
  • Eliminate DOC vacancies and budget waste. Invest $6.4M in supportive housing; $14.9M in mental health resources. Restore $27.8M to alternatives to incarceration and re-entry services.

Budget Priorities With More Details

Updated 3/21/24

Schools & Education 
  • Provide funding to save the education programs that are on the chopping block for FY25:
    • 100 shelter-based community coordinators ($12.3M)
    • Preschool special education ($96M)
    • Promise NYC ($20M – ACS budget)
    • Multi-faceted immigrant family communication and outreach ($4M)
    • Mental health continuum ($5M – divided between H+H, DOE, DOHMH)
    • 450 school social workers ($67M)
    • Restorative justice practices ($21M; $9M baselined in city funds and ensuring the $12M funded by federal aid in the past); expand by $75M for 500 high schools to hire school-based Restorative Justice Coordinators.
    • Bilingual staff ($10M)
    • Translation and interpretation ($7M)
    • Literacy and dyslexia programming ($7M)
    • 60 school psychologists and 15 family workers ($10M)
    • 3-K and Pre-K ($263M)
    • Community schools ($77M)
    • School nurses ($65M)
    • Learning to Work programs ($33M)
    • Sensory, Exploration, Education, and Discovery (SEED) program ($22.5M)
    • Student Success Centers in 34 high schools ($3.3M)
    • Secure $50,000 investment in each of the 6 new English Language Learner programs at transfer high schools
  • Allocate $4 million to expand the successful Linking Immigrant Families to Early Childhood Education (LIFE) Project citywide
  • Allocate $75M to hire additional social workers at competitive rates to support the needs of newcomer asylum seekers and achieve a ratio of 1:150 across schools and 1:50 for high-need schools.
  • Invest $5M to establish a NYCPS Immigrant Family Communications System that supports the Office of Language Access and Marketing and Communications at the DOE to take into account families’ varying levels of literacy and access to digital media;
  • Change the NYCPS’s register audit process to allow individual schools to appeal their enrollment numbers on a monthly basis, beyond the October 31st audited register, to ensure there is adequate per pupil funding to meet the needs of the existing students, any asylum-seekers who have already enrolled and those who will enroll in the future.
  • Restore $60M to Department of Education’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services
  • Increase funding for school staffing, in order to allow schools to lower class size, as required by law.
Childcare, 3-K, and Pre-K
  • Restore 3-K and Pre-K cuts ($263M, estimated to be $399M by IBO) & expand to full day and full year programs, invest in advertising and outreach, and reinvest towards Universal 3K 
  • Fund and settle a new labor contract with nonprofit workers providing childcare services to achieve salary parity for the early childhood workforce
  • Convert more school-day school-year seats to full-day full-year seats because that’s what’s in demand and needed by New York City parents
Youth & Community Development 
  • Restore cuts to the Office of Neighborhood Safety. The Office of Neighborhood Safety’s (ONS) budget faces a $66 million (33.8 percent) decrease. This will shrink the Crisis Management System, Office to Prevent Gun Violence, and eliminate the Precision Employment Initiative, a jobs training program that targets neighborhoods with high rates of gun violence.
  • Fully fund adult literacy programs:
    • To continue serving the 11,000 to 16,000 students DYCD reports, the City needs to invest between $29.7 million and $43.2 million for Adult Literacy at a rate of $2700 per student.  
    • As part of this investment vision, baseline the $21,720,000 for DYCD Adult Literacy that appears in the Mayor’s Preliminary Budget for FY25.  
    • Ensure that the $21.7M is included in DYCD’s Adult Literacy RFP for the next 3 years.
    • Ensure that the DYCD RFP is structured in ways that still award existing high quality/high performing programs as well as new applicants, and make awards at funding rates that actually cover program costs. 
  • Restore $6.9 million to preserve afterschool programming for 3,538 students. Without this restoration, the COMPASS Explore program will end on June 30, and over 1,500 middle school students will lose after school services come September. 
  • Restore $19.6 million to ensure a full day and week of programming for Summer Rising middle school students. Without this restoration, middle school students will only have Summer Rising programming from 8 am to 4 pm Monday-Thursday, with no programming on Fridays. Fridays are usually the day reserved for field trips and fun activities.
Housing 
  • Increase FHEPS and CityFHEPS affordability and expand eligibility of CityFHEPS and other voucher programs to include families and individuals regardless of immigration status
  • Establish a separate line-item for Justice Involved Supportive Housing (JISH) in the DOHMH budget, and adjust funding rates to support the immediate establishment of new units and to stabilize the existing units.
  • Add $335M in expense funding for NYCHA families struggling with rent arrears.
  • Add $3M in new funding for the City Commission on Human Rights Law Enforcement Bureau in FY25, to ensure the City has the capacity to pursue racial discrimination claims, source of income discrimination claims, and enforce the newly enacted Fair Chance for Housing law.
  • Add at least $300 million to the budget for Right to Counsel (RTC) to ensure that there are enough attorneys to represent every tenant that is entitled to Right to Counsel.
  • Increased funding for rental assistance and especially housing voucher programs; strengthening NYC’s right-to-shelter and housing support for formerly incarcerated/criminalized people; 
  • Open more safe havens, stabilization beds, and supportive housing units in the city
CUNY
  • Restore Cuts and Lift Hiring Freezes – Reject Further PEGs and restore previous cuts. Remove hiring freezes. $94 million
    • In FY24, cumulative PEGs from current and prior financial plans resulted in the loss of 363 civilian and pedagogical positions. Without operational support, vacancies for full-time faculty, advisors, mental health professionals and others can’t be filled.
    • According to the Council’s Report on the Fiscal 24 Preliminary Plan the, “citywide vacancy reduction plan required agencies to eliminate half of their current vacant positions. CUNY’s vacancy reduction plan includes the elimination of 156 positions in each year… [through] 2027.”
    • Colleges exhibit real stress. For example, at City Tech 67% of staff interviewed reported that their department had vacancies and 74% of staff reported that this increased their workload. At BMCC, staff report vacant positions and workload pressure in the Advocacy and Resource Center (ARC) where students wait in long lines for the food pantry and other supports. 
  • Baseline Funding for Advisors to Move Toward ASAP for All; Screen for Fair Fares – We can Reconnect and Retain students. $35.5 million 
  • Full-Time Academic Advisors for Community Colleges 
    • Baselined funding will enable CUNY to hire 264 new, full-time academic advisors and achieve a ratio of one advisor per 150 students. 
    • Students with a dedicated advisor are more likely to graduate and 1:150 is a nationally recommended ratio. 
    • In an ASAP-for-all model, students receive the academic support provided by CUNY’s most successful program. This should just be college but CUNY needs funding to match ASAP’s retention rate system-wide.
  • ASAP’s provision of free MetroCards is part of its success, but students are not screened for eligibility for existing city programs. Require CUNY to screen for Fair Fares eligibility and expand transit access to all students.
Transportation 
  • New money to expand the low-income transit discount Fair Fares program to all New York City adults earning up to 200% of the federal poverty line.
  • Incorporate an additional fund to reimburse CUNY students for transit expenses and create a program for college students to have access to free metrocards or a digital equivalent.
  • Restore DOT funding to fully fund transportation and infrastructure projects to implement the requirements of the streets plan, improving bus and bike access for all New Yorkers
Health and Mental Health 
  • Ensuring fair contracts and retention and recruitment of physicians and nurses
  • Expanding student debt/loan forgiveness for healthcare workers 
  • Community based mental health crisis response
  • $2.9M more to enable 5 of the 22 newly funded state ACT teams to operate as FACT teams ($575K per team)
  • $6M more to fully implement Local Law 118-2023, supporting the establishment of four new crisis respite centers
  • $6M more to fully implement Local Law 119-2023, supporting the establishment of five new clubhouses
  • Restore funding to the William Hallock Park Memorial Public Health Library, and reopen it to DOHMH researchers and the public
  • Capital funding to increase the number of public toilets
Non-Profit Human Services
  • Pay the human service sectors on time for contracts and services rendered
  • No PEGS to human services and vital community services.
  • Fund a 5% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for City-contracted human services workers in the FY25 budget and commit to fund a 3% COLA in each of the next two years, bringing the full investment in human services workers to16% in 5 years from FY23-FY27. In the previous two years, the City Council and Mayor have included $100 million total to human services workers as a “Workforce Enhancement” that is appreciated but slow to roll out and not as impactful as a true COLA for workers. This three year COLA commitment would help ensure the gap between human services workers and their peers in other industries- that did receive wage increases- doesn’t widen.
Parks, Environmental, & Climate
  • Expense (restore cuts on the table): Restore $88 million of funding for the Parks Opportunity Program, which provides job training and support for 1,300 to 2,000 people each year and helps keep our parks clean, and is being shuttered by budget cuts. 
  • 1%for Parks – Restoring the 15% cuts (~ $75M) and bring the parks budget up to 1% of the city budget (~ $1B)
  • Renewed investment in DEP to build and maintain rain gardens and other flood mitigating infrastructure, especially in Environmental Justice Areas
  • More money and staffing at DOB to implement LL97 and local climate laws and money for electrifying school buses (mandated by law).
  • Save Our Compost –  Restore $7 million in NYC Community Composting program funding (The Compost Project and GrowNYC), and keep programs on Parks land/property
Legal Services, Immigration & Language Services
  • Increased funding for family and criminal defense, as well as civil legal services; expansion of material resources for New Yorkers – SNAP, cash assistance, free/low-cost child care availability, and other programs that give cash and material resources to families.
  • Put an end to the Mayor’s Limits on Shelter Stays, regardless of immigration status, to ensure stability and safety for vulnerable New Yorkers in their journey towards self-sufficiency.
  • Maintain level funding with no cuts to the Rapid Response Legal Collaborative, an innovative and life-saving legal service program designed to help immigrant New Yorkers who are at high-risk of deportation and require emergency legal assistance.
  • Immigrant Opportunity Initiative
  • Baseline $5M in FY25 Adopted Budget to further the expansion of language services through continued development of the recently launched three language services worker-owned cooperatives;
  • Invest $70 million in funding for immigration legal services ;
  • Invest $20 million in an emergency immigration legal services program to meet the growing need of the City’s newest immigrant residents; 
  • ESOL services for Adults: (also see DYCD)
    • There are 2.2 million adults in NYC with limited English proficiency or without a high school diploma.  The City needs to invest between $29.7 million and $43.2 million for Adult Literacy at a rate of $2700 per student. 
    • As part of this investment plan, baseline the $21,720,000 for DYCD Adult Literacy that appears in the Mayor’s Preliminary Budget for FY25. 
  • Invest resources to address capacity of social workers and other mental health professionals at city shelters to ensure trauma-informed medical professionals, counselors, social workers etc. are present to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate care
Fund Real Public Safety & Divest from DOC
  • Reduce DOC uniformed headcount to 5,100
    • Eliminate vacancies for uniformed staff. The Department of Correction currently employs about 6,150 uniformed staff (910 vacancies) and anticipates cost savings based on an average of 1,451 uniformed vacancies in Fiscal Year 2025, but hasn’t made plans to rightsize this agency in alignment with closing Rikers. 
    • Hold staff accountable for chronic absenteeism. The Nunez Federal Monitor reported in October 2022 that DOC had identified 1,029 officers as chronically absent, and in November 2023 that DOC could not clearly report if these staff had returned to work or been held accountable. If approximately 50% (500) of these officers are terminated and 50% return to work to avoid termination, spending on jail operations could be reduced by $55.8M.
  • Restore $672K in cuts to the Board of Correction (6 positions and 17.5% of their budget)  to maintain oversight capacity for city jails
  • Restore $27.8M to the Office of Criminal Justice for ATIs/ATDs and re-entry programs including $6.7M for alternatives to incarceration, $13.1M for supervised release, and $8M for re-entry services.
  • Restore $3M to the Office of Criminal Justice for Crime Victim Services
  • New funding to community based mental health treatment including expand crisis respite centers and clubhouses (as mandated by Council laws) and mobile treatment teams (see health section)
  • Increased funding for education and libraries to continue/expand jail/prison services such as tele-visit programs, research reference, book circulation, re-entry assistance.
  • Increased funding for evidence-based, community-driven public safety initiatives, such as mental health first aid and de-escalation training, harm reduction programs, non-carceral anti-violence interventions, public health support.
  • Community based mental health crisis response, replacing School Resource Officers w counselors and student supports.