Brian Lear on WNC, with us now the chair of the New York City Council Finance Committee, Justin

Brannon.

Why? Well, now that it's May, the Council and the Mayor are in the home stretch of the budget negotiations for the next

fiscal year which begins on July 1st and many city services are in play. The mayor's

latest version in their back and forth would spend $114 billion, that would be the total budget, about 4% more than last year in city taxpayer-funded costs.

It projects better revenue than the mayor earlier said would be coming in.

That's good news.

So he restored some proposed cuts,

including to the police force and early childhood education.

Libraries would still be closed on Sundays though.

Some of the new demands on the budget are the loss of federal COVID era aid

implementing a smaller class size law, about a

billion dollars more budgeted for asylum seeker services next year, according to

the mayor, and other things that we'll ask about. Here is the mayor and other things that will ask about.

Here is the mayor last week.

And we'll get to the mayor's statement last week.

Basically, he said he avoided layoffs, avoided raising taxes,

and here's the mayor now. What we did not do is just as important as what we did do. We did not resort to tax hikes,

major service cuts, or layoffs, and I cannot emphasize this enough.

The measures we took worked.

Now, thanks to our discipline and prudent approach,

were able to invest in the things that matter to New Yorkers in the executive

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