Mayor Bloomberg is working fast to get ahead of any financial crisis the recent Wall Street nonsense may cause. Earlier today, he floated the idea of a seven percent property tax increase. Now the New York Times reports the Mayor’s budget director, Mark Page, has circulated a memo asking heads of all city agencies — including the police and fire departments — to tell him in 15 days how each will cut 2.5 percent from their current (2009) budgets and 5 percent from their 2010 budgets. The memo says that the City seeks to reduce the operating budget by $500 million this year and $1 billion in 2010.
Agency heads weren’t the only ones meant to get the message: the memo was “distributed to reporters by the mayor’s office,” says Azi Paybarah of the Observer.