August 4, 2015Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you. Thank you very much, Chair Labate. Thank you for the work you do. On behalf of the people in New York State, we appreciate the opportunity to work with you on a regular basis. I want to acknowledge and thank the members of this board for all they do for the city and for the state. I’d especially like to single out Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and Comptroller Scott Stringer, both of whom are crucial partners in all we do and who we are in constant touch with. Thank you for the work you do. Thank you, of course, to Jeff Halis, John Levin, and Lawrence Golub, and to Executive Director Jeffrey Sommer for the work that you do as part of this body.I want to give you today a broad accounting of the city of New York’s financial health, which I’m glad to say is very strong. Since I last appeared before you, my administration has deepened its commitment to a progressive, honest, and responsible stewardship of the city’s finances, rolling out a full slate of investments to create a stronger, and more resilient, and more equitable city, while taking what we think are truly innovative measures to protect our long-term fiscal health. I say this not as a slogan, I say this as a literal fact – fiscal prudence underpins every decision we make. It’s a foundation of our Fiscal ’16 budget, developed and adopted in true partnership with the New York City Council, that’s worked with us in an atmosphere of openness and transparency. And I’m proud to say we delivered not only a strong budget, but an on-time – in fact, an early budget. I want to thank the members of my team who played such a crucial role in the process – our first deputy mayor, Tony Shorris; my budget director, Dean Fuleihan; and our commissioner for the Office of Labor Relations, Bob Linn; all of whom did, I think, an exemplary job. The Fiscal ’16 budget reflects our values and vision for the city, as well as the complex and critical moment in which we find ourselves. There are many indicators – by the way, I should hasten to add, what I’m saying here mirrors a lot of what I said at the preliminary budget presentation and our executive budget presentation earlier in the year. There are many indicators that show how the city’s economy, at large, has recovered from the Great Recession. Yet, a tremendous number of people in this city have not recovered. The number I’ve used many times still holds true – nearly 46 percent of all New Yorkers are living at or near the poverty level. More than half-a-million New Yorkers are either unemployed, working part-time while searching for full-time work, or looking for work and not finding it at all. And the cost of living continues to strain our families. In 2014, over half of renters in New York City were rent-burdened, meaning they spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing. This has all come together into an unprecedented situation during this recovery. And I think it’s fair to say in the cases that I’m talking about – so-called recovery. Poverty continues to grow – there were 186,000 more New Yorkers below the federal poverty level in 2013 than there were in 2009. So, literally during the timeframe that we believe this recovery to be happening in, a huge number of people have slipped into poverty, which is the reverse of what we saw in previous recoveries. The inequality I’m describing inhibits a thriving and prosperous future for the city, not simply for the people who make up this city, but for the city as a whole. So, you’ll see in our budget the fact that we’re using every power, deploying every tool, making every investment we think prudent to address these issues, while always remaining attune to the need to be fiscally responsible, and paying close attention to shifts in the economic climate.In that vein, we are extremely attentive to signs of concern on the horizon. One crucial example – U.S. GDP growth of 2.1 percent in the context of this recovery makes it the second lowest of the 12 recoveries since World War II. So, we – I think that is one of many troublesome statistics that suggest we must brace ourselves for a downturn. No one can predict what’s to come, and it is that very uncertainty against which we are fortifying ourselves. We’ve taken extraordinary steps to cut costs, to build up our reserves, to reduce our risks, and to make realistic forecasts. When this administration took office, we immediately began to remedy perhaps the most urgent fiscal situation we faced, which is the fact that we had literally none of our workforce under contract. We quickly and respectfully, working closely with those who represent our employees, changed that situation. We have now come to terms with over 80 percent of our workforce and the unions that represent them. By securing both civilian and uniformed labor patterns, we purged a great deal of uncertainty from the city’s budget. And this has protected all New Yorkers, allowing us a powerful measure of control in an otherwise uncertain economic landscape. These responsible labor settlements, developed in partnership with our employees, provide fair raises to the men and women who keep the city running, and they’ve enabled us to set unprecedented healthcare savings goals, fundamentally bending the healthcare cost curve for the city. These are not pie-in-the-sky targets, as our most recently quarterly healthcare savings report indicates. Labor settlements have already resulted in a $400 million dollar reduction of healthcare costs for Fiscal ’15. I’m proud to say, we are on track to meet our next goal of $700 million saved in Fiscal ’16. And we are confident we will ultimately achieve our commitment of $3.4 billion dollars saved in total though Fiscal ’19. These savings factor into a truly honest budgeting process. It takes a frank and cautious approach to revenue approach to revenue and expense forecasts, and drives us to continually reduce our already manageable out-year gaps, ensuring that they’re realistic, and it helps us to clock in at a much lower than the historical average level. We are also taking complimentary and unprecedented action to build up the necessary resources to contend with a downturn, first, by raising the general reserve – the city’s precautionary savings for expenses – to $1 billion dollars annually, and that is true throughout the life of our financial plan over these next years; second – by raising the retiree health benefits trust fund to $3.3 billion dollars; third – by creating the first ever capital stabilization reserve of $500 million dollars, protecting our ability to keep the infrastructure of the city in good repair, and allowing us to lay the foundation for growth.We’ve made tremendous strides for creating a more efficient government that performs at the highest level, while providing real savings to our budget. In addition to the healthcare savings already discussed, agency savings will reduce expenses by $530 million dollars in Fiscal ’15 and ’16. When factoring in an additional $400 million in debt savings, we stand to save nearly $1 billion dollars in those two years. And we continue to work with our agencies on a savings plan that boosts reserves further and keeps our future budgets in balance. All of these measures have led to the rating agencies to affirm our strong, stable ratings from last year, and to cite our prudent management of the city’s finances. So now, these efforts to strengthen the city’s economic position are deeply connected to the work we do every day to build a New York that is stronger, and more resilient, and fairer for everyone. Our budget reflects this through targeted investments, as outlined in our blueprint for the future of the city, OneNYC. We followed through on commitments from last year – for example, investing approximately $295 million in Fiscal ’15 and $443 million in Fiscal ’16 to make sure that more than 70,000 four-year-olds can expect full-day, high-quality pre-k beginning next month. Second – we’re investing $618 million in Fiscal ’15 to – we’ve invested in Fiscal ‘15 $618 million to finance over 200 – excuse me – over 20,300 affordable apartments. 20,300 affordable apartments – placing us squarely on track to meet our goal of 200,000 affordable apartments by 2025. We’re also making a host of new investments – $165 million in Fiscal 16 to transform our underperforming schools in the places where parents, teachers, and community all bring resources to bear to change the lives of our children; $170 million in investments in Fiscal ’16 to give the NYPD the tools and strategies it needs to be safe, to draw closer to the communities it serves and to continue to maintain the city’s historically low crime levels; and significant capital investments to urgently combat climate change and mitigate it’s effects by reducing the city’s carbon footprint by 80 percent by the year 2050. That includes more than $1 billion dollars in capital investments to retrofit all public buildings in the next 10 years, which will also ultimately yield major cost savings on the expense side.In conclusion, we all know by law, New York City must balance its budget each year and we’ve done that. But in larger sense too, this is a budget predicated on the notion of balance. We know and we’re demonstrating that progressive change and financial prudence can and must go hand in hand. This has driven a budget of bold ideas and commitments made with a clear-eyed assessment of the possible and the prudent. It reflects the sacred trust that has always placed in those who are honored with leadership of this city. It’s our obligation to set a course and chart a route forward that will lift up each of the more than 8.4 million people who live here while always preparing for whatever economic winds may blow our way. Thank you, Madam Chair.