Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn and the City Council today announced an agreement for an on-time, balanced City budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, which begins on July 1st. The plan balances the budget with no tax increases and avoids more severe budget cuts - despite an record reduction of the amount of tax dollars the State returns to the City - through the use of more than $4 billion of prudently saved prior year resources, billions in agency savings actions, an increase in revenues and concessions from the United Federation of Teachers. The City Council is expected to vote on the FY 2012 budget plan early next week, marking the tenth consecutive year Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council have enacted an on-time, balanced budget.

"Tonight, we have agreed upon a fiscally responsible budget that does not raise taxes, and protects the core services that will allow us to continue growing our economy, improving our schools, and protecting our neighborhoods," said Mayor Bloomberg. "We are able to produce a budget that will keep our City strong through difficult economic circumstances because of our unwavering commitment to fiscal responsibility over the years, which produced savings that are now allowing us to avert the most severe cuts. Across the city, families are still struggling to recover from the national recession - and they are cutting back on expenses, and finding savings wherever they can. City government owes taxpayers a budget that does the same - and that is exactly what we are delivering."

"Even in these difficult fiscal times, New Yorkers expect us to protect the most vital services without putting our future economic stability at risk," said Speaker Christine C. Quinn. "Those New Yorkers can rest easy tonight knowing that our children will still have great teachers, our seniors will still have great centers to visit, and our neighborhoods will still have great firehouses to keep them safe. And I'm incredibly proud that the City Council, under the leadership of Finance Chair Domenic M. Recchia, Jr., was able to do all this without using any additional dollars from our Health Care Trust Fund. I want to thank Mayor Bloomberg and all of my colleagues for coming together to make tough choices, and produce a budget that is both fiscally responsible and responds to the needs of real New Yorkers."

"This budget protects jobs and vital services without mortgaging our future," said Councilman Domenic M. Recchia, Jr., Chairman of the Finance Committee. "We saved teachers, firehouses, seniors, libraries and child care, and we did it without crippling our ability to deliver a budget next year. I want to thank Speaker Christine Quinn for her leadership, as well as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for working with us to deliver this budget. We didn't always agree, but we all had the best interest of New York City at heart. I also want to thank our Finance Division, my colleagues in the City Council, and most importantly, the public. They called our offices, they flooded our inboxes, they showed up in force at our hearings, and they told us exactly what was important to them. This was a collaborative process, and considering the challenges we faced from a struggling economy and reduced government aid, it was a success."

"I want to thank all the parties involved in this agreement for their willingness to come together to prevent the harm that would come to our students from a massive loss of public school teachers," said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. "In particular I'd like to cite the key role played by Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her members and staff, along with Chancellor Dennis Walcott and the DOE officials who worked with us to find ways to prevent what could have been a disaster for our schools."

The budget agreement includes no layoffs of teachers and no fire company closures. The budget agreement includes more than 1,000 layoffs in non-uniform and non-pedagogical titles. Some of those layoffs can be averted with union cooperation on savings.

Tax revenue projections over the FY 2011-2012 period have increased by a total of $170 million since the Mayor's Executive Budget was presented nearly two months ago. The change represents a less than 0.25 percent deviation in the revenue forecast over the two-year period. The additional revenue is being used to avoid more job losses.

The FY 2012 budget benefits from more than $5 billion in savings from ten rounds of budget gap closing actions, starting in early 2007.

United Federation of Teachers Concessions

The United Federation of Teachers has agreed to concessions in their contract that will produce savings to help avoid any teacher layoffs. The union has agreed to end all teacher sabbaticals for one year and reforms to the Absentee Teacher Reserve that will require all teachers in the reserve pool who do not have full-time assignments to work as substitute teachers, reducing substitute costs. The union concessions are expected to save a total of $60 million.

Use of Prior Year Resources

The FY 2012 budget utilizes approximately $3.6 billion from the FY 2011 year end surplus that was prudently saved and utilizes approximately $700 million from the Retiree Health Benefit Trust, which was created by the Mayor and City Council in 2006. Without the use of those dollars, the City would have been forced to make more severe service cuts that would have a significant impact on quality of life throughout New York City.

While the FY 2012 budget plan achieves a balanced budget for the fiscal year starting July 1, 2011, the budget deficit for FY 2013 is currently estimated at nearly $5 billion.