Carr explains vote - Staten Island investments, voting no over stripped NYPD funding

Carr.

I'm disclosing on the record of the council proceedings that the Italian Club of Staten Island, the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island, and the Garibaldi-Miucci Museum are funded in the budget we are adopting, and I am associated with those organizations.

And New York City Health and Hospitals is funded in the budget we are adopting, and my spouse is associated with that entity.

Majority Leader, permission to explain my vote.

Permission granted.

Thank you.

I want to begin by thanking the folks in this room who are happiest that the budget process is concluding, and that's the staff.

In particular, my team, Peter Spencer, Loren Centineo, my hardworking budget director, and my chief of staff, Giuseppe Desario, the Speaker's Office, Miguelina and Jonathan, and the Finance Division, led by Nathan.

I thank Chair Lee for mentioning all the names earlier because they deserve to be said aloud for all the great work and hard hours that they put in.

I also really want to thank the speaker for all of her support in this budget.

She set out to really disprove the notion that Staten Island is the forgotten borough.

And wearing my Staten Island delegation hat for a moment, I have to thank her for the incredible investment that she has made in Staten Island.

It's probably the largest single-year investment in recent memory.

And she is really showing that.

her intentions turned into action and I can't thank her enough for everything she's going to be doing to improving the quality of life in Staten Island.

There are also huge wins in this budget that could not have happened but for her leadership and the advocacy of the council

that are important not only to Staten Island but all boroughs, cultural, libraries, and investments in our parks departments so that our parkies can better take care of our open spaces and recreation areas.

Actual money being put away for savings in the rating day fund.

We are light years away from where we were earlier in the year when the rainy day fund was being rated and we were threatened with property tax increases of nine and a half percent.

Thanks to the leadership of this council and in particular our speaker that never came to pass and there are so many things to champion in this budget.

All budgets are full of things we love and full of things that we do not love.

And I've talked about some of the ones that I love just now, but one of the things that I do not love about this budget is one in particular that looms large over this moment is the missing funding for 580 new police officers.

Earlier this year, I was pleasantly surprised when the administration indicated that it was promising to expand the NYPD uniform headcount by 580 officers.

For someone who's been trying to get us back to peak service levels over the course of my tenure, this was good news.

And it was one that I was going to be taking back home to my constituents as a reason for supporting this budget.

A budget like everything else contains things that they will love and things that they will not.

And

consistently what I've seen over the course of my tenure in government, whether it's now as a member or before as a member of staff, is that the NYPD is increasingly asked to do less with less.

And I am a fiscal conservative.

I always want to see if we could be creative and do more with less.

But the standard that is being imposed on the NYPD is unsustainable.

They are a cornerstone of our civil service.

And the decision at the last minute, at the 11th hour, as my South Shore colleague was describing earlier, to pull away this funding, to say that it is not needed, beggars belief.

And all the folks on the other side of the building in the mayor's office would need to do to realize that they are wrong about what is needed in terms of service levels at the NYPD is to talk to the rank and file.

Talk to the labor unions that represent them.

This is supposed to be a labor-friendly town where we defer to the expertise of our partners in labor, unless you're on the other side of the building and that labor organization wears a uniform.

We need to make sure that the NYPD stops relying not only on overtime, but mandatory overtime that is demoralizing and fatiguing our law enforcement.

They do not have enough officers to meet the demands that they have in an ordinary course of a year, both with increasing numbers of protests, with events like FIFA and unexpected good events like the Knicks celebrations

that we experienced, the parade and all the watch parties, and all the other things that happen that we do not anticipate in a year.

There are not enough officers to meet our need.

In Staten Island, we have fewer officers today than we had 30 years ago when we were half the size that we are.

That is unsustainable, and that's why I cannot support the budget that is now missing this committed promise from the administration.

And considering where we began with this budget process, where the mayor inflated a deficit, and that inflation was laid bare as false by the hard work of our council leadership, our speaker, our chair at the finance committee,

and now where we are today, where they're saying that we don't need the police officers that they promised.

This is not the honest and good faith partner that we need in our budget process on the other side of the building.

So with that being said, I'll be voting no on introductions 31A, 92A, resolution 529, resolutions 530, 531, and 532,

pre-considered resolutions 534 and 535, pre-considered resolutions 539 and 540 with accompanying message M69,

pre-considered resolution 543 and M74, pre-considered resolution 544 and M80,

pre-considered resolution 545 and M81, and pre-considered resolution 546 and M82, and I on the rest.

Thank you.

Minority leader, I believe you already made your disclosures.

Okay, thank you.

I would like to recognize Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers, who I believe has to make an additional disclosure.

I'd like to also disclose that we are funding the YMCA, a not-for-profit, in this budget, and myself and my family are associated to that organization.

I vote aye on all.