Budget cuts affect city kids' summers

When his parents couldn't afford to send him to summer camp, Port Lau settled in for a summer at home: Eating. Sleeping. Playing video games.

With no one supervising him most of the time, it could have felt like a summer of leisure in New York City. Instead, it was excruciatingly boring.

That's the kind of school break a rising number of kids can look forward to this year as budget crises in New York and other American cities rob children of the activities and programs that have long defined summer in the city for urban youngsters.

Swimming pools are being closed; recreation centers are locking their doors; library summer reading programs are suffering; openings for short-term jobs have evaporated.

Lau's vacations of boredom ended the summer he was 14, when a city-funded program got him his first job -- doing filing and clerical work at the state Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Now 18, the college freshman credits the experience with landing him a string of jobs and internships.

In New York City, the youth-employment program that got him the job is facing a cut of more than $15 million, which means that this year the program is slated to have 10,000 fewer spots for young people from the ages of 14 to 24 -- a nearly one-third reduction.

To Lau, it's one cutback that just doesn't make sense.

"We are the students of the future. We're going to be the ones who make New York prosper," he said. "So why are they trying to limit us?"

Similar cuts nationwide

The stories are similar elsewhere. In Washington, D.C., a summer camp for children whose families come from Ethiopia is losing its city funding, as are more than half the city-funded summer-camp programs serving low-income communities. Detroit's youth summer-jobs program is expected to be down to just 1,200 spots, compared with 7,500 jobs two years ago.

This year and last, declines in revenue and reductions in spending across the country are steeper than at any other point in the last quarter-century, according to a National League of Cities survey.

"It's not necessarily that youth programs are being singled out, it's that so many other things have already been cut, and everything needs to be examined at this point," said Christiana McFarland, research manager for the league. "There's no more wiggle room in the budget."

Some city officials are trying to fight back with private partnerships. In New York, companies from American Airlines to the firm that runs the Empire State Building have donated $3 million in cash or jobs to the youth-employment program.

Worry: Keeping kids busy

Also on the chopping block in New York City's proposed budget: four swimming pools, New York Public Library children's program cuts that would result in 70 percent fewer youngsters being served, more than 6,000 public-school teaching jobs, family literacy programs and outreach for homeless youth.

"This is certainly not going to be the year of the child in New York," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, one of a number of local officials who have objected to the cutbacks, saying they will most hurt the city's middle class and working poor.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said the changes in city services are regrettable but necessary because of harsh state and federal funding cuts.

For parents coping with the unique challenges of urban child-rearing, it can be hard to imagine summer without public programs.

"In New York City, it's not like we can open our doors and all of our kids can run out and play," Manhattan resident Tracy Ranson said while keeping an eye on her 2-year-old son at a crowded playground. "You need some kind of program for these kids."

It's a trade-off, some say

Political observers say that cutbacks affecting children, however painful, are a hard choice made necessary by the current economic climate.

When performing triage on bleeding city budgets, policing and security must be the priority, because rising crime can hurt every other aspect of city life, said E.J. McMahon, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.

If "you've got to balance out some summer park programs against policing the parks, I think you've got to choose policing the parks," McMahon said.

"It's a tough choice but that may be what it comes down to in some places."