Metro

De Blasio’s $6B construction plan balloons budget to record high

Mayor de Blasio on Wednesday released an updated 10-year construction plan for the city that adds roughly $6 billion in new costs he described as “crucial” to maintaining the city’s infrastructure needs.

The proposed spending puts the capital budget at a record high $95.8 billion — up nearly 7 percent since it was set at the previous high of $89.6 billion in January.

New big-ticket items include a $1.9 billion subsidy to make 10,000 units in the mayor’s affordable-housing plan even cheaper, $300 million to renovate homeless shelters and $355 million for facade repairs at city public-housing developments.

Asked at a City Hall press conference to explain the massive boost from just four months ago, de Blasio said, “I think the simple answer is growing infrastructure needs that are going unmet that can’t be ignored.”

The mayor also unveiled an $84.9 billion executive budget for fiscal 2018, which begins on July 1 — just months before voters go to the polls for the mayor’s re-election.

That’s an increase of 3.2 percent over last year’s executive budget of $82.2 billion.

Government watchdogs expressed concern that the budget added more than $700 million in new agency spending since January despite reduced tax-revenue projections from real-estate transactions and personal income taxes.

New spending items include $36 million for a plan to expand pre-K to 3-year-olds as well as funding to install air-conditioning units in thousands of public-school classrooms.

“This spending growth is not accompanied by any additional increase to the city’s budget reserves, and budget gaps projected in future years have grown,” said Citizens Budget Commission president Carol Kellermann.

The city’s projected spending gaps in fiscal 2019 through 2021 grew by about $1.2 billion since January. City officials said the budget reserves are relatively high, at $5.25 billion, and de Blasio said that he’s instituting a partial hiring freeze for certain managers and administrative workers.

“There’s an ideological current that believes we should shrink the size of government,” the mayor said. “We disagree. It’s as simple as that.”