Politics on the Hudson

Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano announced today that the city’s projected budget shortfall for the 2012-13 fiscal year is at least $72.6 million just to keep the city at the status quo with no increases in services or salaries.

Spano, a Democrat who took office three weeks ago, said in his statement that the numbers are based in part on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed state budget. Spano also warned that the shortfall is expected to grow.

“This number is a current projection across the board,” Spano said in a press release issued this afternoon. “We are beginning the process of working with our State Legislative representatives in Albany. We will continue to partner with our labor unions and City Council to ensure we can maintain our budget to protect our work force and taxpayers. Additionally, our Education Redesign Team will further examine our budget to look for efficiencies needed to bridge the gap for our students.”

The city’s new fiscal year begins July 1 and Yonkers mayors traditionally unveil their proposed budgets in April because the state is supposed to adopt its budget on April 1.

The full text of the release is on the jump

(more…)

The Civil Service Employees Association union representing non-teaching staff in the Yonkers Public Schools issued a press release today blaming city officials for failing to reach a budget deal to prevent the layoffs of 368 of its members.

The city’s proposed 2011-12 budget included more than 700 school layoffs to close a school funding gap of $42 million. The new fiscal year begins on July 1, and that’s when the layoffs take effect.

Here’s what the union local president Bobbie DiBattista had to say:

On behalf of the members of the CSEA Yonkers School District Unit, I would like the public to know we have made every effort to work with the administration of the Yonkers Public Schools to avoid the layoff of 368 of our members,” said CSEA Yonkers School District President Bobbie DiBattista. “We attempted to resolve the layoff issue through meaningful discussion. However, no matter what we did, the issue of layoffs was fraught from the beginning with anti-union rhetoric and was stuck in the quicksand of Yonkers politics. It is truly unfortunate that the individuals on both political sides, including Mayor Amicone and members of the City Council, were more concerned with their own political futures than the proper education of the children of Yonkers. It’s a shame that supposed grownup individuals decided to play politics and preferred to bash working people who live in Yonkers instead of resolving the issue. The layoff of 368 dedicated CSEA members shall forever be an example of their incompetence.

Here is the full text of the union’s press release: (more…)

The Yonkers City Council will hold a last-minute 9:15 meeting tonight to redraw their request asking the state legislature to create a transitional finance authority.

Yonkers officials want the TFA so they can  borrow $20 million to help close a $42 million deficit in the Yonkers Public Schools that threatens more than 700 layoffs on July 1.

Last week city officials said that state officials called their plan unsound, provoking a press conference and finger-pointing.

Although there was no draft resolution on the TFA in the Yonkers City Clerk’s late-Sunday night email announcing the meeting, one significant change in the TFA could be the elimination of a salary freeze.

The previous request sought to freeze Yonkers workers’ salaries, which last week Sen. Jeff Klein’s office likened to a Wisconsin-style attack on public workers.

Last week Assemblyman Mike Spano, who is running for Yonkers mayor, pointed to the state comptroller’s office’s concerns that the TFA proposal is financially unsound. This morning Spano’s office informed that the state comptroller’s office’s concerns were expressed verbally, not in any written form that could be shared with the media.

Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone released a press release this afternoon asking the City Council to hurry up and take action on a financing scheme that could deliver up to $20 million to the Yonkers Public Schools.

Amicone is proposing that the city create a Transitional Finance Authority, something that requires approval by the state legislature. The City Council held a hearing last night on the topic, the latest in a series of meetings about this authority.

The council took no action last night and some council members may travel to Albany next week to discuss the matter with officials from the state Comptrollers Office and with the city’s state delegation. The city charter requires the City Council to adopt a budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year by June 1.

The currently proposed budget includes more than 700 layoffs in the schools to close a $42 million gap.

Meanwhile, the council’s Republicans issued a press release of their own calling for “shared sacrifice,” which means city workers accepting a 5% pay cut, a wage freeze and a freeze in city contributions to union welfare funds.

Here are copies of Amicone’s and the council Republicans’ statements: (more…)

Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone posted a YouTube video appeal to the city’s school unions asking them for millions in concessions before the city commits $20 million in emergency funds to the Yonkers Public schools.

The five-minute video lays out the Yonkers Public Schools’ $42 million deficit reduction plan, which includes more than 700 lay-offs and the elimination of school sports and pre-kindergarten.

Amicone said he’s  willing to help, but not without compromises from the unions.

“If the City Council and I are going to ask Yonkers taxpayers to rescue the schools, it is only fair that the school unions help too,” said Amicone, adding that if school employees give up contractual raises and step increases this year, the needed savings will be achieved. “We are not asking you to give up any money out of pocket.”

The Journal News received a press release about Amicone’s appeal just an hour or two yesterday after the Yonkers Federation of Teachers announced that it has tentatively agreed to $3.3 million in contractual changes to teachers’ daily work schedule.

Teachers union president Pat Puleo said yesterday that the $20 million in concessions that schools Superintendent Bernard Pierorazio seeks are “undoable.”

Amicone offered few details about the proposed $20 million in emergency funding for the schools, other than suggesting it would be a one-time infusion by the city’s taxpayers.

Here’s his press release: (more…)

The Yonkers Public Schools students who organized Thursday’s protest in front of City Hall said they used Facebook and Twitter to bring out a crowd that numbered in the hundreds.

The protest organizers are teens from the district’s seven high schools’ student body councils.

The organizers said they mobilized after schools Superintendent Bernard Pierorazio met with them on Tuesday to discuss the district’s 2011-12 deficit, which as of today is projected at $83.1 million.

“Our superintendent spoke to us about the immense budget cuts that our city was faced with and I got up personally and I said to my fellow student government council members that the budget cut was completely unfair and that we had to do something about it,” Saunders high school student Layla Vasquez said yesterday.

Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone criticized state lawmakers who Amicone claims decided to “sell out public school children to appease teachers union.”

Here’s what he wrote in his statement released this morning.

Yonkers Mayor: State Lawmakers Sell Out Public School Children to Appease Teachers Union

Yonkers, N.Y. (April 1, 2011)—The following is an official statement from Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone regarding the FY 2011-12 state budget adopted this week by the New York State Legislature. Specifically, the mayor’s comments concern a $14 million appropriation for the Teacher Resource and Computer Training program, a discretionary fund used by tenured teachers for continuing education classes. There are few requirements for these classes. More information can be found here: http://www.nyiteez.org/NYteachercenters/homepage.htm <http://www.nyiteez.org/NYteachercenters/homepage.htm>

“Time after time the State Legislature has proven its dysfunction and ineffectiveness in ways that continue to anger and offend the taxpayers of New York State. But in more than fifteen years of dealing with the legislature on behalf of the city of Yonkers, I have never been more disappointed with our state lawmakers than during this budget cycle.

“As they say, the devil is in the details. And that couldn’t be more true than with this budget. Hidden deep within the state’s spending plan, we just found out, is $14 million in continuing education monies for teachers—- a blatant payoff to the teachers union. It’s outrageous that the legislature has sold out our children in order to scratch the back of the most destructive special interest in Albany. While students across New York including in Yonkers will be forced into larger classes and must forgo music, art, athletics, and other important programs because of this budget, the legislature has ensured that tenured teachers will be afforded the educational opportunities that were robbed of our public school children.

“I cannot fathom how anyone who voted for this budget can justify this outrage to parents of school children who will now be denied educational opportunities because of their grossly misplaced priorities.

“Almost as offensive is the fact that everyone is holding hands and patting each other on the back because the state finally managed to pass an on-time budget after spending the better part of three decades shirking their fiscal responsibilities. Never mind their total abdication of decision making when it comes to tough choices. With this budget, the state has done nothing but pass the buck to local governments and school districts all across New York.”
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State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, and students in the Yonkers Public Schools announced their displeasure today with $32.5 million in proposed reductions to state education for the city’s schools.

Stewart-Cousins wrote to Senate majority leader Dean Skelos, a Republican, asking him restore the money proposed to be cut and to have the Legislature adopt two Yonkers school funding bills she sponsored last year for pre-kindergarten and increased enrollment. Her letter follows below.

Meanwhile, students in the Yonkers Public Schools announced a Thursday morning rally at 7 a.m. in Getty Square to protest the cuts to the schools that would be necessary if state leaders adopt the proposed cuts to the city’s state school aid.

The students expect to rally in Getty Square and then march to City Hall.

Sen. Andrea Stewart Cousins’ letter to Dean Skelos on Yonkers schools funding

Yonkers attorney Stephen Cerrato is expected to announce his candidacy tonight for the Republican nomination in the City Council’s Fifth District.

Cerrato, 33, said he is running to replace term-limited Republican Councilman John Murtagh  because he’s concerned about the city’s direction.

“People in my district are frustrated that they are out of the loop,” Cerrato said yesterday. “They have legitimate issues and it doesn’t seem like their issues are being listened to.”

One example of the city’s undesirable trajectory is the crisis facing the Yonkers Public Schools, where state aid cuts, rising pension costs and increased health insurance premiums has schools Superintendent Bernard Pierorazio predicting an $87.8 million budget hole that could force him to elimanate 732 positions on top of the more than 400 he eliminated in June.

The schools’ crisis could likely result in higher property taxes, which Cerrato said is big concern in his district, where many residents own their homes.

“The bigger issue is spending and we need people on (the City Council) who are going to be fiscally conservative. Start making cuts in City Hall and start making better decisions on spending money,” Cerrato said.

Cerrato pointed to one money-saving measure that came up last week in the City Council — having about 111 City Hall staffers who do not contribute to their health insurance premiums pay for some of it.

“Lead by example rather than expecting everybody else to make sacrifces and cuts, which may be necessary,” said Cerrato, whose community involvement includes membership in the Colonial Heights Association of Taxpayers and baseball and basketball coaching at St. Ann’s Church.

Cerrato said that his accounting background would also serve him well in budget season if elected.

“I think we need people with the skills to grapple with these complex issues,” said Cerrato, the son of a Yonkers City Court judge.

Another concern of his is the cosiderable development that’s occurred in the city under Mayor Phil Amicone’s seven years in office.

“These development projects are very large. Hopefully there is some tax benefit to the city which may relieve the tax burden. I don’t think we’re seeing that,” he said.

Cerrato is married to Angela-Joy (née Lifrieri) and the couple have two children ages 3 and 1. Cerrato said he and his wife have not decided whether they will send their children to the Yonkers Public Schools.

Cerrato will have his campain kick-off tonight at 6 p.m. at the Polish Center, 92 Waverly St., Yonkers. His campaign website is www.stephencerrato.com and his contact is info@stephencerrato.com

Earlier this week Mayor Phil Amicone’s spokesman David Simpson accused the Department of Public Works union, the Teamsters, of an illegal job action because so many Yonkers residents did not have their trash picked up on time, or in some cases, more than 10 days late.

Earlier today the Teamsters’ chief shop steward in Yonkers, Anthony Manzo, denied that his union staged a job action and he said that none of his members have been charged with wrongdoing by the city.

“Nobody got written up, nobody got fined as of today,” Manzo said. “I would be at the hearing and there isn’t a soul that got written up yet.”

Manzo said the disruption in garbage collection for the past two weeks is due to a number of factors, but mainly due to the fact that all of the DPW’s youngest workers were laid off, and they are the ones who typically did the garbage runs.

“They’re sending all the cripples from all the other departments to sanitation. Those are the people going to the hospital,” said Manzo, referring to DPW workers who were hospitalized earlier this week because of heat exhaustion. “They’re sending people with hip replacements, heart attacks, knee replacements. They’re sending these people out and they can’t do the work.”

Manzo said the 55 layoffs in his department will be complicated by a retirement incentive that may induce another 20 workers to leave.

As for uncollected trash on some city streets, Manzo said that the city’s ordinances required sanitation workers to leave behind trash left in supermarket plastic bags. The city’s rules also has limits on garbage can weights, which were initially observed but have been relaxed since the first week of the new collection.

Manzo also explained that the older workers stopped doing garbage routes 10 or 15 years ago and have forgotten the routines.

Manzo said his union gave up $500,000 in concessions the last time the city announced layoffs in December of 2008, and it offered the city $500,000 in concessions this summer.

“It didn’t work out. I think the mayor and his staff told us it wasn’t enough money and that’s where we left off as of now,” said Manzo, adding that he would attend this afternoon’s City Council budget-adoption meeting in hopes of working out a last-minute deal.

Yesterday City Council President Chuck Lesnick said he favored restoring twice-a-week garbage collection. Lesnick couldn’t say yesterday how the city would pay for that, suggesting a combination of union concessions and a greater tax increase than 4% tax rate increase proposed by Amicone