Mayor Eric Adams pleaded with some of the Big Apple’s richest residents Friday to pick up the slack for New York City agencies as they weather sharp cuts due to ballooning migrant costs.
“This is a moment where it’s an all hands on deck moment,” Hizzoner said to a packed room at the swanky Harvard Club during a Police Athletic League luncheon Friday afternoon.
“The way it goes, New York goes America goes, but I’m going to need you more than ever to support many of these organizations like PAL, Robin Hood Foundation, and others,” the mayor told the crowd, which included Tony Danza, John Catsimatidis and Mitchell Modell, the former CEO of the sporting goods chain.
“A moment where our philanthropic interests must align with some of the gaps and services that we are seeing today,” the mayor continued.
The solicitation came during Adams’ first public comments since unveiling the first of three rounds of 5% cuts to New York City’s budget to account for the billions of dollars it’s on the hook for to take care of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have flooded the city.
He also had another ask of New York’s elite, contact their federal representatives and the Biden administration.
“I need your voice to reach out to Washington DC and say this is your city,” Adams said, adding, “New York City is the economic agent of this entire country and we cannot continue to watch New York City carry a national crisis like we are witnessing now.”
Easing into his pleas Friday, Adams touted how his administration had focused on intervening in the lives of the city’s kids and how his school’s Chancellor, David Banks, has focused on “quality education,” which he said is key to keeping kids out of jail.
The mayor, though, failed to mention the steep reduction in after-school and summer programs and other extra-curricular activities as well as the DOE’s more than $1 billion budget reduction through fiscal year 2025.
“We’re going to need you more than ever now,” Adams said, before addressing the elephant in the room.
“We, unfortunately, announced yesterday of some real painful cuts in our services,” he said, adding, “It’s going to impact every area of delivery of services in the city.”
The mayor described the process as “one of the most painful moments in his public service career.”
As part of the belt-tightening plan, the NYPD will cancel the next five academy classes, bringing the levels of uniformed officers to the lowest in three decades by June 2025.
Firefighters are also on the chopping block if they are out on “long-term light duties” — meaning they’ve been injured on the job or are out sick — in a move described as unbelievably callous by fire sources.
The city will soon see dirtier areas around pedestrian and park areas and have fewer public trash cans, mainly in the outer boroughs, with the Sanitation Department slashing nearly $100 million over the next two fiscal years under the plan.
The city is expected to spend more than $12 billion on the care of migrants with more than 140,000 arriving in New York since the start of the crisis in the spring of 2022, with little help from the federal government.
Adams rolled out a similar stump to address the flood of asylum seekers, telling the crowd the desperate migrants simply came for the American Dream but to achieve that they need to be able to work.
“There’s nothing more anti-American than not being able to get up in the am or pm hour and go to a place where you can provide for your family,” he said.
The city, for its part, has only been able to get 2% of the tens of thousands of migrants who have to come to NYC to file for work permits with the administration.
Only 3,200 asylum seekers have filled out the proper paperwork to start earning a paycheck, whether through federal temporary protected status, which allows migrants to immediately apply, or those who have been in the country seeking asylum for more than six months.
Others could have applied through non-profits or on their own, but that figure was unclear with no one tracking the applications.
The feds were highly successful in helping that process, submitting 1,700 applications during a Homeland Security clinic. That pop-up was canned though after two weeks.
Adams added that the city has seen some progress, noting that more than half of the migrants who come through NYC are no longer in the city’s care.
“They’re living on their own, they’re doing for themselves, or they’ve moved on to stabilize their lives. So there’s been a lot of success.