Mayor Bill de Blasio updates New Yorkers on an impending blizzard, with help from a sign language interpreter, at the Office of Emergency Management.
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There were sporadic reports of heavy flooding Saturday morning in New Jersey, and Cuomo said flooding on Long Island is his greatest worry.
“The MTA and the state will make the ultimate decision, but we will be in close consultation”, Mr.de Blasio said. De Blasio said the city would meet its obligations to its five pension systems with the goal of 100 percent funding by 2032.
“As the health care economic picture has changed, we now have many more Medicaid patients not going to our public hospitals, going to our voluntary hospitals – an intense increase in the pickup rate of voluntary hospitals taking on those patients, leaving HHC with even fewer customers who come in with the ability to pay”, de Blasio said.
The budget also adds more than $50 million to the city’s ongoing struggle to combat homelessness, which has dominated headlines and driven down the mayor’s poll numbers in recent months.
Snow accumulation and ice on the tracks forced the shutdown Saturday of all above-ground subway lines, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
After de Blasio and others balked, Cuomo appeared to back off the idea.
“I’m confident this is the right figure for what we have now”, he said. “We can not accept a cut”.
The mayor, often scrutinized for his snow preparations, once again tried to assure New Yorkers that the city is prepared for its first storm of the season.
Thursday’s presentation is just the beginning of the city’s budget process.
But City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Council Finance Chair Julissa Ferreras-Copeland in a joint statement called the preliminary budget a good starting point for negotiations with the City Council, who ultimately must agree to the spending plan.
Among the city snow tools now at the ready, according to the mayor: 579 salt spreaders; 303,000 tons of rock salt; and 1,785 snow plows.
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The proposal, for the 2017 fiscal year that starts on July 1, would increase the city’s budget by $410 million over this year’s adjusted budget, which had grown to $81.70 billion as of January. “But the savings program is weak, and he’s not doing enough to bolster reserves to ward off a recession”.
