Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good afternoon, everyone. We’re at a different time today, because this is such an important day for our city – the day that we close down our City budget for next year. The Council – the City Council will be voting later on this afternoon as we prepare for the year ahead. A very, very important day every year, but this day, this year – different than any other way face in decades in this city. In many ways, the toughest budget challenge this city has seen in a long, long time. Remember, we started this discussion with a painful reality. Because of the coronavirus, because of the economic crisis, because of so much that has happened to us – layer upon layer, crisis upon crisis – we have lost so much, particularly in human terms in this city, but we also lost to people's livelihoods. We've lost so any things, including the money that helps our City government to run, including the revenue we depend on to provide basic services to our people. $9 billion evaporated – gone in the course of just a few months. And that's what we've had to deal with here. And it was a challenge when you suddenly are missing $9 billion to come to an agreement to figure out the priorities. It's not easy, but I do want to report that we have reached an agreement with the City Council. The vote is going on later today.
It's been a challenging, but very productive process. I want to thank the City Council. I want to thank Speaker Cory Johnson, the members of the Council, the staff of the Council. Of course, want to thank everyone here at City Hall and our team at the Office of Management and Budget. Everyone worked really, really hard, literally around the clock to get this done and to make sure this was a budget that was, of course, balanced – we were going to live within our means – we were also going to do the things that matter most protect the things that matter most. I always say four things we're focused on now, your safety, your health, putting food on your table and a roof over your head. That's what we need to focus on at this moment of history given all the challenges facing us, that's what this budget does. And this budget also sets our foundation for us to continue the restart of our economy, continue our recovery, but do it in a way that just doesn't bring back a status quo that existed before, but helps us to become a fairer city. So, a lot getting done here, even with the challenges.
So, we're about to start Fiscal Year ‘21 tomorrow, and the Fiscal Year ‘21 budget will be $88.1 billion. Contrast that to the budget that I announced at the time of our annual preliminary budget presentation in February, a time that feels like a long, long time ago. At that point, the budget was projected to be $95.3 billion. We've lost so much for the new fiscal year. We lost so much during the fiscal year ending now, but we're still going to move forward together.
So, how did this happen? With some very, very tough decisions – very deep cuts to city agencies. A lot of savings had to be found. Of course, we drew on our reserves, which we never want to do, but this was the moment in history that we needed to do that. So, we had hoped – for months and months, we had hoped there would be a stimulus bill voted in Washington to help New York City, to help cities and states around the country. We thought it would happen in May. We thought it would happen in June. It hasn't happened. We don't know when it will happen. We have to move on without the stimulus. We've hoped for borrowing authority for all from Albany, did not happen. We had to move on without it. New York City on its own, doing what we could do with what we have – something New York City has had to do before in our history, we're doing again. So, we put together a budget that will work within that budget is a billion dollars in labor savings. And I want to be very clear, we're going to get to work with our labor unions to find that billion dollars. We're going to keep working on trying to get that stimulus in Washington, that borrowing authority in Albany. But if we cannot find a way, then October 1st looms as the day we would have to put into effect layoffs. And that's the last resort, to say the least. We do not want it to happen. We're going to fight hard to make sure it does not, but we did have to include it in the budget as a last resort because we had no other options. So, with all these challenges, we still found a way to get to a budget that, again, focuses on your health, your safety, putting food on your table, making sure you have a roof over your head. That's the focus. And let me give you examples – the expansion of NYC Care. NYC Care, guaranteeing that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who don't have health insurance or can't get health insurance will still have a primary care doctor and will only pay that which they can pay and will have health care available to them across the board – that now is coming to Manhattan and Queens. This year, in just a few months, will be in all five boroughs. The creation of specialized clinics in some of the communities that have been hardest hit by COVID and clinics that will focus on making sure we stop the spread of disease in some of the areas where it's been most prevalent – this includes Jackson Heights and the surrounding area of Central Queens; Treemont, in the Bronx; Bushwick in Brooklyn, those new clinics coming. And then of course the efforts to feed hungry, New Yorkers. I have to tell you, I've talked to so many people who do this important work. Everyone reports to me, those lines, growing, growing for people who need food. Folks who lost their paycheck, lost their livelihood, and now need food. This has been a primary focus in this budget, and I know the City Council feels the same way. The amount of money we are now committing between the efforts in the fiscal year just ending now and the new fiscal year is approaching a half-billion dollars. That's how much we have had to spend to keep New Yorkers fed, to make sure we do not have a hunger crisis in New York City – $450 million so far and I expect that that number will grow. And I'm sorry that number will grow, but we have to keep fighting to make sure people have the food they need. Their families have the food they need until the day that, thank God, one day our economy will come back, people's livelihoods will come back and we'll be able to see people go on to a much better situation.
So, this budget is about all those basics. And it's also about change, it's also about progress. It's about ensuring that we act in the spirit of social justice. I hear the voices all over the City, calling for justice. I know the City Council does too and we're acting on that call for justice. I believe it is our mission to redistribute resources, to those who need them the most, to act on our values, to say that the community has been hardest hit by the coronavirus and so many other challenges need more. And the truest act of equality is to take resources and give them to those who have the greatest need. And it's time to do the work of reform, to think deeply about where our police have to be in the future, where the NYPD has to be in the future, how we reimagine what the NYPD does to make it ever more connected to the communities it serves. We have done that with neighborhood policing and we need to go farther now in new directions that will keep the City safe, but also really create the trust that we need between the NYPD and our communities. So, look, as we've looked at the question of public safety, I had three ground rules, when we went through all these discussions with the Council to figure out the right way forward. I said, we have to keep the City safe. We have to protect the levels of patrol strength throughout our communities. And we had to make sure that we were really doing something to refocus resources on young people and on communities hardest hit, that we were reinvesting in ways that would help us address a lot of the root causes of the problems we face. I am confident that this budget does exactly that. $1 billion is shifted away from the NYPD in a variety of manners. We will be canceling the upcoming recruit class that would have started in July. And we're going to make sure that patrol strength is consistent by reassignments from administrative duty to patrol duty, by ensuring that the NYPD will make revisions in some of the functions it performs, ceding certain functions to civilian agencies. We're also going to focus on overtime. This has been an area of real concern with many agencies, but obviously with the NYPD. And so, we're going to make sure there are major reductions in overtime expenditures, use that money for other important needs. And we'll be reducing non personnel costs and contracts. All in all, a variety of actions to take a billion dollars and move it to other needs, other approaches. Now, where are we going to focus those reinvestments? Well, particularly on young people. So, summer youth programming – this has been an issue – such an important issue. Look, back in April, we didn't know what the future would bring. We didn't know whether the City would be able to reopen. We didn't know what things would look like. Now, we know that we can really energetically recreate a variety of types of summer youth programming, whether it is online or in-person, summer youth employment, or community centers and youth centers. So, we're going to ensure summer programming for over 100,000 New York City young. That's going to be an investment of $115 million. Another $116 million will go to education. Another $134 million will go to social services and family services in the communities hit hardest by the coronavirus. And another crucial piece – so, this is something I felt very deeply about. You remember back in my State of the City of remarks in February, before the coronavirus. I said, let's focus on young people, let’s focus on community centers, recreation centers for young people, let's invest in a way that gives young people more positive options. This is why I think it's so important that we take money from the NYPD’s capital program and put it into the needs of our young people and our communities, and particularly young people who are in public housing.
So, $450 million, will go to youth centers and recreation centers focused on communities of greatest need. And this will include money redirected from the plan for a 100th – excuse me, for a new 116th Precinct in Southeast Queens, that money will be redirected to a new Roy Wilkins Community Center in Jamaica, in Roy Wilkins Park. Also, $87 million will be moved to create widespread broadband service in NYCHA for families that don't have it now, that don't have access to the internet. We want to make sure that families and particularly young people are able to bridge that historic digital divide. We're going to invest to answer, to give young people and families the service they deserve in that developments that don't have it now. So, this is real redistribution. This is taking resources and putting them where they're needed most with a particular focus on our young people.
So, the very important while we are doing this work, many, many New York City graduating high school seniors have a whole different thing on their mind. Their families are thinking about tonight, the virtual graduation ceremony, never before done, obviously nothing on this scale is ever been done before. And we want to honor the class of 2020 that have gone through so much, fought so hard, fought their way to graduation, no matter what was thrown at them, we want to honor them tonight. There will be that extraordinary citywide telecast to show our graduating seniors we care about them. There'll be a number of special guests and performers, and there will also be two keynote speakers and I'm going to announce them now. One deserves the title legend in New York City legend the pride of the Bronx, she makes us proud with everything she has achieved in her career. And the other is famous for his achievements on the baseball diamond, not someone we think of first and foremost coming from our City, but he had the wisdom to become the fiancé of the New York City legend from the Bronx, J-Lo and A-Rod will be our keynote speakers for the virtual graduation. We thank them both, and it's going to be exciting to not miss it tonight at 7:00 PM. We want to thank PIX channel 11 for a broadcasting live. Thank you so much. And you can also watch online NYCclassof2020.com. And again, congratulations graduates, we are very, very proud of you.
Finally, I do what we do every day, our indicators. And as we're dealing with the budget and so many other challenges, this is a great day in terms of our indicators. And it's attributed to all of you for the hard work you have done. So, indicator number one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for a suspected COVID-19 threshold is 200, today it is 40 patients. Number two, daily number of people in Health + Hospitals, ICU threshold of 375 today's report, 301 patients. And most important, percentage of people testing citywide positive for COVID-19, threshold to 15 percent, today down to one percent, which is wonderful. Congratulations, New York City. A few words in Spanish –
