‘We believe in reaching every part of the city’: Mayor outlines COVID-19 recovery budget for New Yorkers

At his daily briefing on Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio outlined a new COVID-19 recovery budget to be voted on in the City Council this week.

The mayor called the budget a “radical investment in working-class people” and detailed five goals the budget would address following COVID-19. The spending plan must be finalized by the mayor and City Council before midnight on June 30, the budget deadline.

Even so, de Blasio was confident a new deal could be struck with Council leaders before the deadline — perhaps as early as Monday.

“The City of New York, as of Wednesday, is going to be passing a new budget for New York City for next year. The recovery budget is what we need now. It’s a radical investment in working people. It is a really different approach because we finally got the support we needed from other levels of government so we could invest in working-class people,” de Blasio said.

According to de Blasio, the plan would address five areas to achieve a full recovery for “all parts of the city”: finishing the COVID fight, building strong fiscal management, boosting economic growth and bringing jobs back to the city, driving academic recovery by closing the COVID achievement gap and addressing students’ emotional needs and focusing on public safety with an emphasis on “community-based solutions to violence.”

While the mayor did not disclose a specific dollar amount for the budget, he said that more details would follow after the City Council voted on the resolution on either Tuesday, June 29 or Wednesday, June 30.

“We believe in a recovery for all of us, we believe in a recovery budget for all of us, we believe in reaching every part of the city. Not just repeating the status quo of the past, but moving forward,” the mayor said.