On January 16, 2020 Mayor de Blasio released his $95.3 billion Preliminary Budget for City Fiscal Year 2021, which begins July 1, 2020 and runs through June 30, 2021.

In his presentation on the budget, Mayor de Blasio made clear that significant anticipated cuts from the State led the Administration to craft an austere budget with few new investments. In fact, a one-year $106 million investment in Fair Fares is one of the few areas of new commitments that will directly help low-income New York children and families.

CCC shares the Mayor’s concerns about deeply damaging State cuts to New York City and we are prepared to work closely with the Administration to ensure that our state and city budgets are not balanced on the backs of the city’s children and families. However, we also know that early and consistent investments in children are the surest way to achieve better long-term outcomes in wellbeing for all New Yorkers and greater long-term savings for our city and state.

We are therefore concerned to see that the City’s budget once again fails to fund summer programs for over 34,000 middle school students, and lacks needed investments in homelessness prevention and social supports for homeless families in commercial hotels. Greater attention is also needed to address behavioral health services for youth and the scarcity of infant and toddler care options in the City. Additionally, the Mayor’s budget fails to fund key city council initiatives upon which children and families rely.

As more details about proposed city savings emerge, CCC will work to ensure that measures to create efficiencies do not negatively impact families’ access to critical health and human services. A detailed summary of the City’s FY 2021 preliminary budget proposals that impact children and families can be found in the following pages.