Maybe they should figure out how to build a library for less than $2100 a sq ft

https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/118704548054032384...

Oh man, I didn’t realize it was 3%!

NYC has a ton of people at the top of their fields in a really dense setting. I wonder what city services cause such a big shortfall! On paper it should be easier to finance NYC than any other big city, so I wonder where the money goes.

Or an I incorrect and the city is poorer than I think? Perhaps Long Island sucks more incomes away from the city than I thought?

Everything in NYC is expensive. We spend almost $40,000 per year on each public school student. Construction is hugely expensive. The Department of Corrections has 1.4 corrections officers for every person incarcerated.

Simple solution, imprison less people. NYC prisons are notorious for overcrowding for decades now [1] [2].

It's shocking for me as a German that this seems to have been a consistent fact of life that's just accepted by everyone and nothing is being done - no new prisons are built to offer more space for prisoners, and nothing is being done to reduce the amount of people heading towards prison.

[1] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/prison-a...

[2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/new-york-post-photos...

NYC average daily jail population has been decreasing almost continuously for the last 30 years. Conditions at Riker's Island are much more to do with the problems between the civilian oversight function and the COs unions than they are to do with an actual excess of inmates with respect to cells etc.

About $32 billion comes from property taxes and $38 billion from "other taxes" (mostly income tax).

[0] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/omb/downloads/pdf/fp11-23.pdf

The mayor of NYC has been talking about illegal immigration scaling up this year costing the city billions.

"vital services"

yeah everywhere I look, someone's reading a book that they got from the library. All these people walking down the street not minding traffic, because of public library books they're reading. Lots of traffic accidents caused by those public books too, people are looking down instead of at the road. Lots of families are not eating dinner together because the children cannot stop reading books they found at the public library. They cannot get thier homework done because their faces are glued to the screen, oops, I mean paper, PAPER, from pages off public library books. I don't know what we would do without this vital service. I dont' know where people could possibly get information or read stories if it wasn't on paper bound by thread stitched between cardboard and glossy print. Do you have any ideas?

Good thing that libraries also provide digital information services, including digital book rentals and digital records and academic publication searches.

As well as facilities to access those services if you do not have an adequate computer, internet connection, or subscription access to these resources at home.

Surely there are other cuts with less impact. I suspect many more users would rather they redirect the ample Private Foundation funds for "NYPL LIVE" stage events (December: "Lesbian Poetic Traditions") to staying open on Sundays.

But Library management wants to host cool friends AND generate angry voters.

I see this pattern often in government budget showdowns; the tiniest cuts produce outsized service impacts.

Tax the billionaires. Tax the vacant real estate holdings at the high end. Tax short term rentals.

We lost net 10 of them costing hundreds of millions of dollars already. Short term rentals were basically banned outright. Not very many vacant real estate holdings, and how are you going to prove that they were sufficiently vacant -- going to roust them all at night?

City needs to actually get its act together to become more efficient.

> Tax short term rentals.

Careful.

Don't fuck over the transient or temporarily (permanently!) displaced with these broad strokes.

Well, give more money to the cops. That'll fix everything.

The police budget is ~6 billion, out of about a $110.5 billion budget

[0] https://www.nyc.gov/site/omb/publications/agency-budgets-pro... [1] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/omb/downloads/pdf/fp11-23.pdf

That's before overtime, which the NYPD routinely abuses to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually[1].

[1]: https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/nypd-overspending-on-ov...

That's too high for what they do (or don't do)

great thats a billion dollars left for them after NYC covers the budget shortfall.

The NYPD is skipping an entire Academy class because of the cuts. It was uniform to every city agency.

Five classes if I remember correctly; there are usually four classes per year.

And the immigrants.

This is the problem the mayor is trying to get help with. The number of illegal immigrants this year has skyrocketed and it's bankrupting the city.

Well if that all it is, there's a simple solution. Make all the illegal immigrants legal. Then the budget for illegal immigrants goes to $0.

Firstly; that would be a Federal problem, not something that the City can do anything about. Secondly; even if they were illegal immigrants (which is undetermined at this point; most of them claim asylum and have had no determination made for their case) they would still have had the right to shelter under City law.

So you're saying that illegal immigration isn't really the problem?

And "inflation is transitory!" And "the chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams!"

I'm saying that the arrival of a large number of people, who are legally unable to work, and who have no support system from families, and whom the City is legally obliged to house is a problem.

Looks like I hit a nerve - Apparently you can criticize working cops, but not illegal immigrants.

In their own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-dh1waEkrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvmJjhk6Gsg

Looks like I hit a nerve - Apparently you can criticize working cops, but not illegal immigrants.

In their own words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-dh1waEkrk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvmJjhk6Gsg

A quick google says the proposed city library budget was $471.5 million and the total city budget is $107 billion.

That's less than half a percent of the overall budget.