Statement from Citizens’ Committee for Children Executive Director, Jennifer March In Response to the Mayor’s Fiscal Year 2018 Executive Budget

Released April 26, 2017

For Immediate Release: April 26, 2017
Contact: Elysia Murphy, emurphy@cccnewyork.org, 212-673-1800 ext 18

Citizens’ Committee for Children (CCC) appreciates the de Blasio Administration’s continued investments in programs and services that will improve the lives and outcomes of the youngest New Yorkers.  We applaud the administration’s investment of $16.5 million in the upcoming year to begin to create the new 3-K for All prekindergarten program for NYC three-year olds.  We are also pleased to see a one year restoration of $10.3 million to help homeless school children and new investments of $15 million to expand anti-eviction legal services, $16.4 million for legal services for immigrants, $9.4 million in City funds for child welfare services including training, prevention and staff at the Children’s Center, as well as the commitment of $68 million to offset profoundly troubling State budget cuts to foster care, child welfare and child care services.

As the City’s budget negotiation process gets underway, we urge the New York City Council and the Mayor to work together to build on these investments and press for greater progress for our City’s children by achieving a FY18 Adopted Budget that funds universal lunch at all public schools, creates targeted initiatives to improve the well-being of homeless children living in hotels, baselines funds for summer programs for middle school students, restores funds needed to maintain elementary after-school programs, and invests additional resources to ensure that greater numbers of children benefit from infant and toddler child care and after-school programming. Finally, we hope to see an FY18 Adopted Budget that addresses the underfunding of human services contracts by increasing funding by 12% to raise salaries, support reasonable fringe benefits and cover existing under-funding of OTPS.

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