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| Mayor Bill de BlasioJohn Lamparski/NurPhoto via Getty Images |
Yesterday, the school safety officers were moving to the NYC DOE, and many people were furious, including Greg Floyd, President of Local 237. I wrote some of his speeches. He's a good man.
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| Teamsters Local 237 President Gregory Floyd (Bryan Smith/for New York Daily News) |
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NYC schools see deep cuts, last-minute program restorations after tense budget negotiations
This is outrageous, and I've used that word several times on my blog in the past couple of weeks.
I hope that someone writes a book about Mayor Bill so that future generations can study what not to do.
Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ Blog
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NYC school safety agents to remain with NYPD, countering budget cut claims
It’s funny math!
City Hall will keep the $326 million school safety tab on the NYPD’s books for at least one more year, even though Mayor Bill de Blasio made the division’s transfer to the Department of Education a key part of his promise to slash $1 billion from the police budget.
The disclosure was buried in a budget analysis published by the Office of Management and Budget on Thursday, two days after the future of policing — and promises of reform — took center stage in the City Council’s debate and passage of Hizzoner’s $88.2 billion spending plan.
The revelation, first reported by Politico New York, may further undercut de Blasio’s credibility with civil rights activists and protesters who have demanded significant changes to the NYPD in the national furor that followed the death of George Floyd, who died the custody of the Minneapolis Police.
A spokeswoman for City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said the mayor told the Council that school safety officers would be diverted out of the NYPD’s budget this year.
“We will hold the Mayor to his word,” Johnson’s spokeswoman said. “The Administration’s response raises serious alarm bells about their commitment to this time frame. This is unacceptable.”
Critics of de Blasio’s proposal — including Johnson — had already charged that Hizzoner used accounting “tricks” to try to inflate the size of the cuts he would impose on the NYPD to $1 billion, a key demand of many local activists.
City Hall promised it would get to hit that goal by slashing overtime at the NYPD by $325 million, nearly in half.
The second major line reduction came from transferring the city’s 5,500 school safety agents from NYPD back to the Department of Education, which ran the program until then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani moved it in the 1990s.
Before the $88.2 billion budget was passed early Wednesday, when de Blasio and Johnson presented the NYPD’s cuts, Comptroller Scott Stringer said the spending plan was loaded with “gimmicks,” “tricks” and “manipulated math.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also jumped into the fray on Tuesday, declaring, “Defunding police means defunding police.
“It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so the exact same police remain in schools,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a press release before the budget passed.
The budget office had still not released the city’s main budget book where this information would typically be found as of late Thursday.
A de Blasio spokeswoman on Thursday night said that the mayor “has been clear that there would be a two-year transition” of the control of school safety agents to the DOE.
“This will require extensive planning and training, and adjustments in future financial plans,” the spokeswoman said. “Over a two-year period the funding will shift from NYPD to DOE, which will be reflected in future plans.”
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