New York Mayor Bill de Blasio struck a public safety theme in the proposed $77.7 billion budget for fiscal 2016 that he submitted Monday. The 51-member council must ratify the budget by July 1.
The proposed budget is up 3.6% from the $75 billion the council approved last year. De Blasio, speaking late Monday afternoon at a City Hall news conference, said the budget closes a $1.8 billion deficit projected in November.
He said reserves total $750 million per year from fiscal 2016 through 2019. Outyear gaps "are still substantial but we're able to reduce them," he added.
The spending plan includes $4.2 million for bulletproof vests, which supplement the $7.3 million he and Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced last week, to be covered in the fiscal 2015 budget to upgrade 13,000 bulletproof vests. He also targeted $11 million for 45 Fire Department ambulances and $6.7 million for emergency dispatchers to improve response time.
De Blasio's initiatives come days after the city's Department of Investigation said "significant mismanagement" was at the root of cost overruns -- to the tune of $700 million -- and delays in the decade-long, multi-billion dollar effort to modernize its 911 system, known formally as the Emergency Communications Transformation Program.
The mayor ordered the report last May.
The program was originally projected for completion as a $1.3 billion cost. According to current estimates, the program will not be fully delivered until 2017, nearly a decade behind schedule, and at a cost of about $2 billion.
Additionally, de Blasio said his State of the City address that the city would earmark $200 million for affordable housing as part of his 10-year plan to construct 80,000 units, the zoning for which could have budgetary implications.
Moody's Investors Service assigns an Aa2 rating to the city's general obligation bonds. Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's rate them AA.
