Not surprisingly, most of our viewers were not so happy with Mayor Bloomberg’s budget proposal. An overwhelming 73% said the City Council should not approve it. Many of our callers say losing these after-school programs may mean having to give up their jobs. More of your thoughts below.

Mayor Bloomberg presented his $68.7 billion budget plan for Fiscal Year 2013 at City Hall today. It includes no tax hikes, and an increase in education spending from $13.3 to $13.6 billion. Bloomberg also said New York City regained 180% of the private sector jobs it lost during the recession.

The Mayor also outlined several cuts to balance the budget. He plans to slash more than 30,000 slots for daycare and after-school programs for kids. And Bloomberg wants to shutter 20 fire companies. New York City will still face a budget gap of approximately $3 billion in 2014. The plan still needs approval after negotiations with the City Council. What would you do?

What's your reaction to Mayor Bloomberg's proposal that balances the budget with no tax increases? Do you support closing fire companies and cutting child care slots if funding for education is increased? How would you describe Bloomberg's handling of City finances the last ten years?

Send your thoughts using the link above.

You know who he is cowtowing to and it isn`t the 99%.

Rosalie
Canarsie

Where were all those jobs filled anyway? What a bunch of malarkey !

There is plenty of wasted money in this city and then for necessary things, not available. For one, all those pedestrian parks - why during a recession do we need this ? For the unemployed to congregate ?

Bike lanes killing off small businesses, less tax revenue from lost income - yet the bike lanes and corner boulders cost lots of taxpayer money. Etc Etc Etceterah.....

Stop all future unnecessary projects - saved income right there - millions if not billions.
Times Square does not need millions in new benches, no one sits there long enough to care. Really now, what about the rest of us? A park bench in exchange for a firehouse or
afterschool program ?

Stop killing off small businesses - helping them instead is helping the city. More tax money, less unemployment.

Bring back car lanes, which will mean parking and parking fees and of course fines.

These are the simplest of ideas, but they are so rational, reasonable and productive that they wont be heard.

Esmerelda
East Village

The mayor's 2013 budget will hurt kids and poor families, especially moms who depend on health care services for their children while they work during these harsh economic times, his proposed budget it will also endanger the lives of New Yorkers by shuttering firehouses, all this in effort to keep his millionaire friends content by not raising their taxes.

Felix
Bay Ridge

Who is going to pay if ONE LIFE is lost because the local fire company closed and it took an extra five or ten minutes for the next closest company to respond? How can he even contemplate closing a fire company when all it takes is a split second for a life to be lost. Seems to me he is leaving education alone this year and turning his knife to the fire department.

No cuts to education but he is cutting child care openings and after school programs. What will he gain by doing that, families that can't work because they don't have child care arrangements for the little ones or the older ones to keep them off the street after school. What is he creating in his last term.

I hate to rush time but a year and a half from now can't come soon enough. We will be rid of Bloomy and maybe then our City can return to some sort of normalcy.

I'm happy there are no cuts to education but I don't like to see cuts going to other vital services either. WE NEED OUR TEACHER, FIRE & POLICE DEPARTMENTS AND SANITATION DEPARTMENTS. OUR TAXES PAY FOR THESE SERVICES.

Jessica
Arden Heights

HE SHOULD SAVE HIMSELF THE TIME OF GOING THROUGH THE SAME PROCESS EVERY YEAR AND RUBBER STAMP IT. WHY DO WE NEED THE APPROVAL OF THE CITY COUNCIL. BOTH THE COUNCIL AND THE MAYOR ARE ALL GOOD FOR NOTHINGS. THEY ARE ALWAYS CRYING THE BLUES ABOUT EVERYTHING AND THEY ARE CLOSING THIS AND THAT AND IN THE END THEY FIND EXTRA MONEY AND MEANWHILE WE NEVER EVER GET AN ACCOUNT AS TO HOW MUCH] MONEY COMES IN AND HOW MUCH THEY SPEND AS THEY WISH YEAR IN AND YEAR OUT.
WE ARE ALWAYS LEFT IN THE DARK.

maxxiee
mp

Bloomberg's way of balancing a budget is to make cuts. That to me is not balancing a budget but decreasing services to the city. For the 10 years all he has done, in my opinion, is cut services raise the cost of living, over develop, over crowd, screw up the school system and buy his third term. The mayor and his flunkies have screwed this city over and I'll be glad to see them go. Making cuts in services that the people need and count on to balance a budget. I can't see how he can take pride in his decisions. He needs go. And Quinn needs to go with him.

Ray Kelly for Mayor!

Shirley
Maspeth

Government as it is operated today is so far beyond what is authorized by the Constitution, that these tiny cuts in the budget are laughable.

To reduce the costs of government, first, cut government to it’s constitutional size. Only the police, the courts and the military are legitimate functions of government. Second, to get things started, cut every department’s budget – excluding the police, the courts and the military – by 10% a year until there is no money left to operate and they are shut down. Over this period of time, private companies will arise to take the place of inept, inefficient government.

Joe
Port Richmond

I support an increase in education spending, for sure; those poor kids have been cut and cut and cut for years. However, this is no way to fund it. Raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers!!

Anni
Manhattan

How can this Mayor want to leave children out in the street? Don't cut children and youth - that's our future!

Susan
Sunset Park

i am so tired of hearing this mayor wanting to close fire houses.bad enough we are down firefighters.by the way wasnt he fighting in the us court to hire firefighters. i think this mayor is losing his mind and he is sooo long over due.i can not wait till he is gone.he is treating nyc like his little play house.

John
Bay Ridge

Did anyone ask young people what they value?

Deep
Queens

Bloomberg has wasted so many millions (maybe billions) of taxpayers' money with his failed grandiose, worthless ideas (City Time, Bike Lanes, Pedestrian Plazas, Standardized Testing [and Cathy Black's salary and golden parachute], to name a few) he has a hell of a nerve cutting fire department services and after-school services. What a total failure and burden this man has been. New Yorkers deserve much better.

Frances
East Village

THE NIGHTMARE IS ALMOST OVER AND PHAROAH BLOOMBERG CAN RETURN TO EGYPT OR GO HELP DETROIT

PEDRO
BRONX

So glad to see Speaker Quinn staying for a whole press conference rather than seeing her crying about name calling of Bloomberg and then running out in the middle of it!

Sam
Inwood

Mayor Bloomberg's mythical financial acumen seems to only apply to his own money, his handling of the City's money has been a travesty if you look at the amount of job loss and money lost and/or stolen by his private vendor cronies. As for the jobs in the public sector growing, I don't know who they are hiring since the City has an unemployment rate higher than the State and National average.

As for cutting child care and closing firehouses, of course Bloomberg would threaten to cut these services. People fearing death by fire will just spread the kind of terror he likes to lord over his kingdom. As for the child care cuts, if I am to understand correctly it will mainly affect low income and working class families, who of course just happen to be minorities. He doesn't want us here and he has made that clear in his reign as Mayor. Saying the money is going to education is a joke since all that means it that it is going to his buddies who run those private charter schools, again schools that benefit only a certain demographic of people.

RL
The Bronx

If Mayor Bloomberg wasn't in office, we would experiencing what Detroit is faced with today--no jobs, no economy!

Christine
Maspeth

This is just another attempt by the mayor to continue to make the public resent teachers, this time by increasing the teacher's budget in exchange for cutting somewhere else. I wish I knew what his vendetta against teachers is.

Rita
Turtle Bay

king bloomberg is a patronizing condescending megalomaniac who is running the city like a corporation, closing schools to get rid of older, experienced well paid teachers and then reopening them to hire younger, cheaper less experienced ones. All that matters to him is the bottom line, he doesn't care about the people who have suffered under his regime. public education in this city stinks, which is very sad. We will never recover from his 12 year reign. Quinn is my counsel member and I blame her for engineering the coup that gave bloomberg his third term. I will never vote for her again.

Meryl
Manhattan

The care and education of a child is not limited to their school day but CONTINUES through what childcare, afterschool and beacon programs provide to support the stability and economies for our families and communities.

Helena
Forest Hills

If they continue to cut the afterschool centers and Beacon programs, than the City might as well as start building jails and additional juvenile detention centers on Randall's Island because Rikers will be full.

Lynn
Forest Hills

Council is in bed with Mayor and does 't give a damn about needs of Manhattanites. School closures would only make sense in a declining school-age population not in one like ours which is growing exponentialy every year? Evidence by the Mayors' Million Tree planting project that is so wasteful they planted 4 trees RiveesideDrive at 76th St in front of Riverside Park which is full of trees. That also destroyed the costly new fountain's sidewalk just put in few years ago. Mayor with Donald Trump's push closed off West Side Highway 's major artery for exiting Northbound West side Highway and spent lots of money erecting an elaborate closure and traffic directive there. Money on the Mayors Million Tree planting effort and that west side Highway Closure, plus spending money on coding streets and erecting people walking areas which snarls traffic even more,,,he needs a reality check, we cannot afford to close any firehouse, school or hospital...doesn't. He know how many Million people inhabit this great city and we continue to swell in population? He lives I an Ivory tower out of touch with day to day citizens' needs, he hasn't a clue of the loss to our quality of life his policies have wreaked on our lives...just come dow to 79th and Riverside Drive to see what that closure has done.

Doris
West Side

Why do our children have to continue to be sacrificed to balance the budget and cover the incompetence of the powers that be. They are not the working class and poor who depend on childcare and after school programs and without them many wouldnt be able to afford private care or work at all. Our kids and education should be top priority. Im a working mom who is a single mom making 30,000 a yr who cant afford extras let the mayor pay our rent when we have to stay home and watch our kids he can afford it he only makes $1 a yr

Jennifer

It is a shame to see how many children and poor families will be affected with these cuts. For a mayor that promotes education, he must understand the need of having after school programs, head start programs etc.

I am writing on behalf o Alianza Dominicana, who lost findings to provide after school program come September.

Anonymous

The majority of those that will be effected by Bloomberg's cuts are those of us in the inner cities. I am a college grad with a Bachelors degree from F.IT graduated in 2009 and have not been able to obtain a job that earns a respectable salary. How will I be able to afford any type of afterschool program once im employed, because according to the mayor we should take any job

Anonymous