City Budget Cuts Hit Low Income Kids And Parent First

As the holidays rapidly approach, people are getting ready to buy presents for their loved ones and the city is getting decked out in trees, lights and department store displays. As festive as the city will look however, essential cuts to day care facilities are going to hit New Yorkers hard, not only for Christmas but the coming year as well. As usual, the least amongst us get the shaft as the rich keep everything but the rapidly devaluing stocks they own.

From The NY Times:

While officials made it clear that the sites would not be closed, critics charged that the reductions would have the same effect, by destabilizing the centers to the point that they would be forced to shut down.

The reductions are part of $62 million in cuts being made by the Administration for Children’s Services that will affect day care services used by struggling working families across the five boroughs.

The agency’s commissioner, John B. Mattingly, said in a press briefing that some hard choices were necessary “to avoid a train wreck” in the city’s day care programs during a time of fiscal crisis. “If we do not make these changes,” he said, “we could push the system to a point where we would be forced to shut the doors of child care centers throughout the city that are currently serving thousands of children.”

The rest of the cuts in the child welfare agency’s day care budget will affect school-age children, who will be served instead by Department of Education programs, he said. By the start of the next school year, for example, Children’s Services will no longer pay for day care slots for 3,300 5-year-olds who can be served through kindergarten and after-school programs.

This isn't all Mattingly's fault of course, he's just the commissioner, not the one who has the final say on the agency's budget. That comes straight from the top at Gracie Mansion. The Mayor was hailed as a smart and bold manager of the city's budget by calling for across the board cuts. However, when the budgetary axe falls uniformly on all city services and not part of any progressive scheme, the biggest losers do not happen to be Bloomberg's contemporaries but the ones he tells to go wear a sweater on those cold nights.