Yonkers council approves budget package

After weeks of political negotiations and hard decisions, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano declared victory Thursday in the battle to balance the city's budget after the City Council unanimously passed his spending plan.

Under the final budget, the city will lay off fewer police officers, Public Works Department and Parks and Recreation positions, and firefighters will keep their jobs. The trade-off: Yonkers will eliminate 30 vacant Fire Department positions and the police force will be trimmed by 11 officers.

Spano touted the compromise and the fact that the budget will hold the line on education, with no cuts to city schools this year.

"While we have a lot of work ahead of us, this is a bipartisan budget that puts Yonkers on a new path of fiscal responsibility," Spano, a Democrat, wrote in a statement released Thursday night after the budget vote. "For the first time in many years, we are restoring education services, avoiding massive layoffs and cuts to services, and keeping the tax increase within the tax cap."

Spano's budget, his first as the city's mayor, originally had called for shedding 112 jobs, including 30 uniformed police officers and 10 supervisors, 26 firefighters, 34 Public Works employees and seven Parks and Recreation workers, to help offset a projected $89 million deficit that has threatened the city's financial stability.

Spano's revised budget, submitted just days ago, restores 25 police officers' jobs, five sergeants' positions, 19 Public Works and seven Parks and Recreation positions, according to a memo from Spano to City Council members.

The $957.6 million spending package also trims 10 percent from the mayor's office and maintains the hiring freeze that has been in effect since Spano took office in January. The budget is $2.7 million less than the fiscal 2012 budget and also calls for a 3.4 percent property tax increase, which is slightly less than Spano's original proposal.

The reduced number of layoffs is the result of weeks of closed-door negotiations between the Spano administration and union leaders, who have agreed to monetary concessions to save jobs. The deals still must be approved by union rank-and-file membership.

On Tuesday, more than 100 firefighters staged a rally to protest the proposed cuts. At the rally, fire union officials criticized Spano's plan, saying it would leave the department understaffed. Spano, however, apparently has submitted the cost-cutting proposal to City Council members for consideration just the same.

Spano's revised budget also restores $560,000 for the Yonkers Public Library and boosts funding for the Yonkers Board of Education to $10 million in the next fiscal year, made possible by an increase in sales tax revenue.

In April, a special commission appointed by Spano estimated that the city's budget deficit next fiscal year would skyrocket to $89.3 million.

Copies of the budget, which goes into effect July 1, can be found on the city's website: http://www.yonkersny.gov/.