Efforts to rezone elementary schools to increase socioeconomic integration and ease overcrowding can spark vigorous debate in the affected communities. But admissions methods vary across the 32 school districts, and even among individual schools within districts.
The number of students in the city’s public schools who lived for some part of the school year in New York’s homeless shelters during school year 2015-2016 rose by more than 4,000, or 15 percent, over the preceding year to nearly 33,000.
Using an annual sample of 770,000 personal income tax returns, IBO explored the distribution of income among New York City residents during the years 2006 through 2014.
The city’s diminishing stock of rent-stabilized apartments is highly sought after by prospective tenants because these regulated units often rent at below-market rates and offer a variety of tenant protections including the right to lease renewal.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: The de Blasio Administration has repeatedly said it planned to increase the number of civilians in the police department so that highly trained officers are not doing administrative tasks that could be performed by others. Although civilianization could help augment patrol strength and cut back on the need for overtime for uniformed officers, the hiring of civilians continues to lag.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: Mayor de Blasio adds city funds to latest capital commitment plan for repairs of the East River bridges and to repave city streets
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: The Governor's budget includes three changes that would reduce the amount of state funding that goes to the city's Administration for Children's Services. While one change is applicable statewide, the two other changes are aimed only at New York City.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: As the city opens new marine transfer stations for processing and shipping trash to landfills, the cost for long-term export contracts is rising.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: The de Blasio Administration has emphasized education and job training as well as other supports for cash assistance recipients, which has led to an increase in the public assistance caseload as individuals remain on the roll for longer periods of time to participate in enhanced programs. But the increase in the caseload now seems to have leveled off.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: The Mayor's latest capital commitment plan includes a 50 percent increase in funding through 2020 for green infrastructure projects
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: NYC Health + Hospitals still faces considerable fiscal hurdles, with more than $1 billion in hoped for federal and state aid still not approved and efforts lagging to shift more of the public hospital system's health care to outpatient services. And the potential gutting of the federal Affordable Care Act would likely mean the city hospitals would be providing more unreimbursed care for an increasing number of uninsured patients.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: Foundation Aid, the state's primary aid to New York's public schools, is once again falling short of expectations under the Governor's budget compared with amounts set under a 2007 legislative agreement to settle the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: City support for charter schools is likely to be substantially higher than the amount the de Blasio Administration has budgeted. The increase is driven by two factors: higher charter school enrollment than currently projected in the budget and likely changes to the state formula that sets the amount the city must provide for each charter school student.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: With the addition of more capital funding, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development is expanding its Our Space program to build housing for New Yorkers currently living in the city's homeless shelters.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: Despite an increase in the hiring of new correction officers, overtime spending by the Department of Correction has continued to climb as new policies and programs are put into place.
Governor Cuomo's latest proposal for reviving the 421-a tax break for housing development has several new features. The Mayor's preliminary budget did not account for the potential cost of this new iteration of 421-a. How much more could this cost the city in forgone tax revenue? IBO's estimate.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: This Report presents IBO's latest economic and revenue forecast, including projections for job and wage growth and real estate sales in the city. Get the detailed projections and analysis.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: The plan for capital spending in fiscal years 2017 through 2020 has grown under the Mayor's latest capital commitment plan, which accompanied the preliminary budget. Along with the growth in planned spending comes and increase in expected borrowing
IBO has produced a new economic and tax revenue forecast for the city as well as re-estimated city expenditures based on the Mayor's Preliminary Budget for 2018 and Financial Plan Through 2021. An overview of our findings.
Under the Mayor's spending plan, the budget for the Department of Education will reach nearly $24.4 billion next year. That's up from about $17 billion in 2008. What's been driving the increase?
The number of adults and families in the city's homeless shelters and the budget for the Department of Homeless Services have both reached record levels this fiscal year. Does the Mayor's preliminary budget for next year include adequate funding for the shelter system?
Mayor Bill de Blasio is again calling for the implementation of a “mansion tax:” a surcharge on the sale of high-end residences in the city. The Mayor made this one of the featured proposals in his state of the city speech as well as in recent testimony to the state Legislature.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development inspects public housing developments across the country to ensure that they are safe, sanitary, and in good repair.
Cases of sexually transmitted diseases—chlamydia, gonorrhea, and (primary and secondary) syphilis—have reached their highest reported levels in 30 years in NYC and record levels nationwide.
Unlike many of the other major de Blasio Administration initiatives, there has been relatively little focus on ThriveNYC, which aims to greatly expand access to behavioral health services in the city. We detail the resources being committed to the 54 programs under the ThriveNYC umbrella
With the Governor's recent proposal, the now lapsed 421-a tax break for housing is again a major focus of the public policy agenda. Despite the fact that 421-a costs the city a considerable amount in foregone tax dollars--$1.4 billion this fiscal year due to prior commitments--there has been little research examining the tax break's effect on housing prices and whether the tax benefit efficiently fosters housing development, the 421-a program's primary goal. We explore these questions in regard to condos receiving 421-a benefits.
The Department of Transportation repairs and maintains the city’s streets. To fulfill this task, the department performs an ongoing street quality assessment and rates sections of every street in the city on an 18-month rolling basis on a scale from 1 to 10.
NYC Transit runs the city’s subways as well as buses in Manhattan and the Bronx and is one of several agencies that comprise the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. NYC Transit employs nearly 50,000 workers and 44,000 of them are union members.
FISCAL OUTLOOK: IBO's annual report on the city's outlook for the years ahead features our latest economic forecast and includes projections of job growth as well as updated tax revenue estimates for this fiscal year and through 2020. In addition, the report presents IBO's re-estimates of city expenditures based on the Mayor's November financial plan and our projection for budget surpluses and gaps in 2017 through 2020.
The ways New Yorkers use their local public libraries has changed. Branch libraries in all three systems have become broader community resources rather than repositories of books and information.
Ten years ago, following the public outcry after the death of Nixzmary Brown, the Administration for Children's Services undertook an effort to increase staffing and lower caseloads among the caseworkers responsible for investigating reports of child abuse and neglect. In this report IBO examines staffing, caseloads, length of time on the job, funding and spending, and other aspects of this effort in the years since its implementation.
The use of sick leave by municipal employees varies widely among agencies. Uniformed employees in the fire, correction, and sanitation departments tend to use sick leave at higher rates than other city workers.
For school-aged children living in temporary housing--homeless shelters, doubled up, or other transitory situations--getting to and succeeding in school can be a greater challenge than for their classmates. This report explores those challenges, with a particular focus on the high absentee rate among students living in shelters and some of the factors contributing to their low attendance. In addition to IBO's usual quantitative emphasis, this report includes the perceptions and insights of homeless families; teachers, principals, and other school staff; and central and district education department administrators captured through roughly 100 interviews and 10 focus groups.
When representatives of the real estate industry and construction unions failed to reach an agreement over wages in January, the 421-a tax benefit program came to a halt for the construction of new multifamily housing.
Graffiti-Free NYC is a city program that removes graffiti at no cost to the owners of residential, commercial, or industrial buildings. Anyone can report graffiti on any property by calling 311.
QCEW data produced by the New York State Department of Labor shows that there are 226,900 private firms in NYC with about 3.8 million workers on their payrolls.
New York City recycles a wide variety of waste, but some materials are more likely to be recycled than others. The city has three solid waste streams: refuse, paper recycling, and metal/glass/plastic recycling. Overall, about 44 percent of recyclable material is “captured” by city recycling programs
In September 2012, New York City launched a set of juvenile justice initiatives that included the expansion of alternative-to-placement programs for youth ages 7-15 found by Family Court to be juvenile delinquents.
With the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the share of adults in New York City without health insurance dropped from 20.9 percent in 2013 to 13.8 percent in 2014, a 7.1 percentage point decline.
Under federal and state law, families with young children receiving cash assistance and participating in work or training programs are guaranteed vouchers to pay for their choice of child care providers.
Although students with disabilities comprised about 18 percent of the overall student body in school year 2012-2013, they made up about 30 percent of the suspended student population (defined as the population of students who have been suspended at least one time).
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: After an initial rise of about 10 percent in the cash assistance caseload following the de Blasio Administration's changes, which made the public assistance system less punitive and more focused on education and training, the caseload increase now appears to have leveled off.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: The Governor's executive budget provides less school aid than expected by the de Blasio Administration in its preliminary budget, shifts some charter school costs to the city, and seeks to increase state oversight of the city's school spending
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: Governor Cuomo's executive budget includes two proposals that would substantially reduce state aid for the city's Administration for Children's Services and a third proposal that excludes the city from funding for the state's Raise the Age juvenile justice initiative
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: The Mayor's budget includes millions of dollars in new funding to cover the cost of an annuity fund for school staff that guarantees 8.25 percent returns a year.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: As the city's public hospitals have faced ongoing fiscal challenges, the de Blasio Administration has increased the city's funding for the system.
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: Questioning local efforts, Governor Cuomo's budget plan proposes new oversight and administrative burdens for the city's homeless services. But the de Blasio Administration and City Council have already expanded key outreach and prevention programs-for which the state provides no support.
Over the past five years, total federal aid to New York City has declined from $7.9 billion in 2011 to just under $7.0 billion in 2015, a decrease of roughly $933 million, or nearly 12 percent. The change was mainly due to the drop in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act federal stimulus dollars.
In light of two recent high-profile school rezoning controversies in which overcrowded schools serving higher income students existed near underutilized schools largely populated by students in public housing, IBO examined the distribution of students from public housing across NYC public schools.
Over the past 10 years, New York City’s overtime spending has increased from $928 million in 2006 to $1.659 billion in 2015, an increase of $731 million, or close to 80 percent (about 40 percent after accounting for inflation).
Before the recent announcement of ThriveNYC, the de Blasio Administration’s initiatives to improve access to mental health programs for youth, adults, and seniors, the Mayor had previously launched measures to boost behavioral health programs for the city’s inmate population.
Build and the Industrial Development Agency play important roles in helping to finance economic development and job creation in the city, yet they are not city agencies. This report looks at their history.
About 75,000 students—or over 7 percent—of the city’s 1.1 million public school students lived in the city’s homeless shelter system or were doubled up in the home of a friend or family member at some point during school year 2013-2014.
There is a great deal of variation in average per pupil allocations across community school districts. In 2013-2014, the last school year in which budgets were set by the Bloomberg Administration, school district allocations averaged $8,255 per student in grades pre-k through 8.
In 2009, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs concluded a multiyear initiative to reform the Cultural Development Fund, the primary source of city funding for hundreds of arts and cultural organizations throughout the five boroughs.
IBO’s review of New York City’s spending on antismoking programs finds that spending levels
have varied widely in recent years—and that after trending downward the local adult smoking rate has been increasing.