Queens officials slam ‘devastating’ city budget
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Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and the Queens Borough Board blasted Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed budget during a budget meeting on Monday, Feb. 13, 2023. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye
By Ryan Schwach
Representatives from Queens’ community boards slammed Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed budget on Monday, claiming that the proposed cuts to the city’s potential $102 billion budget would hurt Queens more than any other borough.
Members of the borough’s fourteen community boards, who, together with Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, make up the Queens Borough Board, met virtually to see a presentation on the mayor’s budget and to weigh in on how they anticipate it will affect Queens’ 2.8 million residents.
The board’s comments will be used by Richards to craft a response to the mayor’s proposal. The response, which will be sent to the city in the coming weeks, will likely be scathing.
The city’s budget sees cuts across agencies, and Queens is not immune – the borough sees the smallest amount of per-capita funding when compared to the city’s other four boroughs.
Richards’ office specifically will see cuts, dropping a total of $827,000 compared to last year.
The borough board meeting follows a hearing held by the BP’s office in which they gathered testimony from organizations across the borough requesting funds.
“We are getting a lot of requests, and we can't fulfill a lot of those requests on the expense side, we just don't have it,” Richards said. “So any cut here is detrimental to ensuring that we can continue to build a Queens that truly works for everyone, especially coming out of this pandemic.”
On many of the budget items, Richards reiterated his desire to fight for more funding, rather than cuts, across the board, and to work with the Adams Administration to do so.
“I know the other borough presidents share my sentiments on this, and we look forward to continuing to have the conversation with the mayor being that he was a borough president too,” Richards said.
Queens’ BP budget has the smallest “per capita” support number of all the boroughs, at $2.11 per capita, a trend that was consistent through most of the budget items for the 2024 fiscal year.
In the total budget, Queens’ $334 million share also has the least amount of per-capita funding.
“This is historically unfortunate and unjust, per capita means continues to be with less funding per person,” said Irak Cehonski, the borough president’s budget director.
Queens’ community boards and cultural institutions are also receiving less money per capita than the other four boroughs.
Specifically, Queens cultural institutional groups are getting the least amount of funding per institution with the second smallest overall budget despite having more cultural institutional groups than the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island.
The $2.34 per-capita funding for Queens is the least. Brooklyn, which has the second-lowest per-capita funding, would see $5.22 for each of its residents.
“The per capita investment in the residents of the borough has always been less than any other borough,” said Queens Community Board 14 chair Dolores Orr. “It's disgraceful.”
Orr’s comments were echoed by other board members.
“Staten Island receiving more per capita, somebody's got to fix it,” said CB12 chair, Charlene Thorbs. “It doesn't make any sense.”
Thorbs called the overall budget “heartbreaking.”
Queens’ 14 community boards would also see cuts of about $15,000 as a result of the proposal.
“We want enhancements to community boards,” Richards said. “I know many of you have come to us and say you know you've had challenges around doing virtual and you have a lot of needs.”
The cuts to education and schools troubled the community board chairs the most, especially as Queens’ population continues to grow steadily.
“We just can't withstand these cuts during this period, when there is a clear need for more funding to go into education across the borough,” Richards said. “I'm getting around to a lot of schools, in particular high schools right now, where you see the disinvestment, and the principals all trying to hold it together.”
In CB14, which covers the Rockaway peninsula and Broad Channel, the population is expected to grow by 30,000 in the next five years.
“On the school, District 27 – we're short 822 seats, I don't know exactly in what particular neighborhoods of the district, but I'm concerned about Rockaway with development that's in the pipeline, that the schools are not coming with it,” said Orr. “We're going to have a school crisis here on the peninsula.”
Richards stressed that this issue is not exclusive to Rockaway, and is felt across the borough.
“We're not just looking at the seats for rectifying the problems we have now, but to look to the future so that we can provide better pupil-to-teacher ratios so that our students can be stronger and our future Queens can be stronger,” said Heather Beers-Dimitriadis, the chair of CB6 which covers Forest Hills and Rego Park.
Richards also argued that cuts to youth programs like the Summer Youth Employment Program are detrimental to the city as a whole.
“Idle time is the devil's playground,” he said. “We need to make sure we're doing more of it, putting some dollars in our young people's pockets, but also giving them the real work life experience.”
Community board reps in general were opposed, and driven to frustration by the cuts.
“This budget is devastating to the community of which I serve,” said Frank Taylor, the chair of Jackson Heights and North Corona’s Community Board 3.”
“This is not fair, this is deplorable,” he added. “We paid some of the highest taxes in the city per capita. We're not getting anything over here except more shelters, less transportation, less supermarkets. I mean, what are we doing? I'm beating my head against the wall.”
