Mayor de Blasio's budget proposal Tuesday will include money for bulletproof windows on all police cars and thousands of new school seats. He offered a preview of his plan in his weekly "Mondays with the Mayor" segment on NY1. Our Courtney Gross has the story.
Up for re-election this fall, it sounds like Mayor de Blasio is looking to please voters with an election-year budget.
"There is nothing more important to our families than their children and we have a lot of overcrowded schools," the mayor said Monday night on the Road to City Hall. "This is an area where we have to make an impact."
On Tuesday, the mayor will propose his new budget for the year ahead. In it, he will almost double the number of new school seats, meaning he will add about 38,000 seats.
On NY1 Monday night, during the mayor's weekly segment on the Road to City Hall, we asked how the city will pay for it.
"Look we have a very aggressive capital budget," the mayor said.
The city is adding $495 million to fully fund the seats, which cost a total of $4.6 billion.
On top of the school seats, the mayor says his budget will also include money to repave 1,300 miles of roads and highways.
"And when you think about the need that matters to most New Yorkers, certainly the paving need is intense," de Blasio said.
And the city will add bullet resistant window inserts to all NYPD patrol cars.
Since de Blasio took office, the number of city workers has increased and the budget has grown by 20 percent. On Monday night, he still said the city was being fiscally prudent.
"Our administration believes in fiscal discipline at the same time as we move what we believe is a strategy to keep strengthening New York City for the future," de Blasio said.
Of course, this is just the start of the budget process. The City Council will also have its say as well. So not everything here will be an election year victory for hizzoner.