NEW YORK — Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that he will eliminate two popular pieces of property-tax relief because the city is in economic distress and can no longer afford it.
One of them is a $400 property-tax rebate, which he said he would retain just six weeks ago. The other is a temporary 7 percent property-tax break put into place last year.
The rebate was first implemented in 2004 to help owners of one- and two-family homes after the city enacted an 18.5 percent property-tax hike. Checks that homeowners were expecting this fall will not go out.
“We know how to get through the tough times ahead,” Bloomberg said. “We’re going to do it by pushing each dollar further and by asking New Yorkers to come together.”
The sobering budget update, coming amid a national economic slowdown, includes the decision not to start a new class of more than 1,000 police cadets in January. The NYPD will go without those officers, and the next class will begin in July.
Bloomberg also is cutting hundreds of jobs, raising fees and fines, cutting library hours, closing dental-health clinics that serve poor children and reducing nighttime staffing at five firehouses.
The city’s workforce will shrink by 3,000 employees: 500 through layoffs and the rest through attrition. The updated budget plan shows that the city faces budget gaps of $303 million this fiscal year and $3.7 billion next year, partly because revenues have declined.
To help bridge those deficits, Bloomberg asked all city agencies in September to come up with their own plans to cut spending by 2.5 percent this fiscal year, which ends in June, and additional cuts of 5 percent the following year.
Those are targeted to save $500 million this year and $1 billion in fiscal 2010.
