This morning City Councilwoman Margaret Chin was among several local dignitaries attending two Lower East Side events — the grand opening of the LES Jewish Conservancy’s Visitor Center and the official unveiling of the Seward Park Co-op’s electric car charging stations. We’ll have more on those stories next week.
Chin was a bit late to the events because she was listening to Mayor Bloomberg’s grim budget address at City Hall. This afternoon, she’s blasting the budget, which slashes a wide range of city programs. Here’s the statement from Chin’s office:
After being briefed on Mayor Bloomberg’s executive budget for FY 2012, Council member Margaret Chin called on community members, parents, caregivers and advocates to band together to fight the massive cuts to teachers, child care, and critical services including firehouses. Council member Chin, (District-1, Manhattan), “The budget proposed by Mayor Bloomberg goes a long way to serving the needs of the wealthy at the expense of our children, union workers, and public employees in our city. I am sick and tired of this administration’s use of teacher-layoffs as a threat to unions, and continued attempts to balance the budget by direct cutting services to the neediest among us… The only ones who will suffer under Mayor Bloomberg’s budget are New York City students and those who can ill-afford to bear the costs of these cuts. The budget process is not a time to further political agendas and personal ideologies. It is a time to come together and decide how we can best protect high need populations in the face of decreased support at the federal and state level. It is not the time to pass the buck. It is the duty of government to protect society’s most vulnerable, in good years and in lean years. Mayor Bloomberg would be wise to remember that…Advocates, parents, caregivers, and the middle and working class must rally against these cuts.”
