The 50-50 sites , where half the new units are market-rate and the other half income-targeted, have moved more slowly. According to a Citizens Budget Commission analysis released last fall, there are six such deals in the pipeline: Cooper Park in East Williamsburg, Wyckoff Gardens in Boerum Hill, LaGuardia Houses on the Lower East Side, Harborview Terrace in Hell’s Kitchen, Fulton Houses in Chelsea and Holmes Towers on the Upper East Side. The project at Holmes Towers was shelved amid community opposition and after Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer filed a lawsuit against the deal, citing insufficient public review.

Without an infusion of cash, the transit authority has warned fare hikes and service cuts are all possible without additional federal intervention, and has already frozen its $54.8 billion capital plan.

Budget watchdogs acknowledge reversing course on the police hires will only go so far for an agency facing an unprecedented fiscal crisis, but say money can’t be left on the table. While the MTA has said it will cost $249 million to add the 500 cops through 2023, budget experts note those costs will rise as police salaries do. The Citizens Budget Commission estimated it could cost the authority more $500 million over 10 years.

Not only do the budget documents show the mayor’s $1 billion claim to be at least $300 million short, but more than a third of the reduction also hinges on a $350 million overtime decrease that many have said is an unlikely figure.

"That's a really high target to set for a single year," Ana Champeny, director of city studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, said this week in the podcast, What's the Data Point. "So I think that's another reason why there's some skepticism about, in the end, whether this reduction will really hit the target."

We pay for the best, but get yesterday’s technology and work practices.

Take trash collection. A few years ago, the Citizens Budget Commission took a critical look at New York City waste collection. Waste collection in Gotham costs more than it does in other cities. Not coincidentally, New York also fails to take advantage of modern technology that makes waste collection faster and more efficient.

While retiree benefits for cops are more expensive anyway, due to their younger age of retirement, New York’s costs are huge even compared with those of other cities.

A 2013 study by the Citizens Budget Commission found that cost-sharing between retirees and the government was far more common elsewhere, where retirees typically pay about 25 percent of their health-care costs. In the private sector, such cost sharing is even greater — if an employer offers any retiree health-care program.

Ana Champeny, director of city studies at the nonpartisan, New York–based Citizens Budget Commission, said that in areas like New York City, police overtime is a significant cost. Overtime often exceeds the adopted budget in New York. In 2016, it was $600 million more than the city’s adopted amount, according to the CBC. During that same year, 53% of uniformed employees received overtime that exceeded 20% of their base pay.

“If there’s an arrest at the end of the shift and the officer stays on to do all of the paperwork and the processing, that converts to overtime,” Champeny explained.

It has been over a decade since the budget was cut, an always painful process, but just what the city council voted to cut remains unclear to the public. Andrew Rein of the Citizens Budget Commission noted that this budget is “precariously balanced” while Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said, “In a moment when New Yorkers, with the entire nation, are demanding a reimagining of public safety, a reckoning with systemic injustices and inequities, the city falls far short with a budget that misses the moment of need.”

But Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, said neither de Blasio nor the Council has done enough to deal with deficits projected to exceed $5 billion in outlying years.

“New York City leaders may be breathing a sigh of relief for meeting the budget deadline ... but the fiscal crisis is far from over,” Rein wrote in a statement from the CBC. “The budget for fiscal year 2021 is precariously balanced, and actions taken do not go far enough to shrink large budget gaps in fiscal year 2022 and beyond. New York City’s leaders did not make sufficient hard choices needed to put the City on a firmer fiscal foundation for the long term.”

Rein said this year’s budget, which went into effect at 12:01 Wednesday morning, “is balanced with reserves, federal aid, cuts, potentially optimistic economic and revenue assumptions, questionable savings from police overtime, and unspecified savings from working with municipal labor unions.”

While retiree benefits for cops are more expensive anyway, due to their younger age of retirement, New York’s costs are huge even compared with those of other cities. A 2013 study by the Citizens Budget Commission found that cost sharing between retirees and the government was far more common elsewhere, where retirees typically pay about 25 percent of their health-care costs. In the private sector, such cost sharing is even greater—if an employer offers any retiree health-care program.

Maria Doulis, a vice president at the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group, said city leaders need to deal head on with an unpredictable crisis that’s bound to stretch past the new fiscal year.

“Not enough was done to get ahead of next year’s budget gaps. Most of the 2021 savings from the agencies do not recur in the following years,” said Doulis. “Target savings from working with labor are budgeted to yield recurring savings, but how they get there is entirely unspecified.”

Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group, has recommended several “hard choices with difficult consequences” that the city could undertake to find almost $1.7 billion for the next fiscal year and reduce gaps down the line without layoffs or borrowing. It recommends cutting spending by $1.6 billion through improved efficiencies, renegotiating labor contracts, and cutting 9,000 employees from the 340,000-strong full-time workforce through attrition. They also called for a two-year property tax increase of 2%, selling city assets and freeing up another $750 million from the $1 billion general reserve fund.

“If the City’s leaders are willing to make the right and reasonable hard choices, they can balance the budget without asking future generations to pay for today’s bills or resorting to layoffs,” said CBC President Andrew Rein, in a statement.

But David Friedfel, director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, said increasing those taxes could be the impetus for wealthy New Yorkers to flee to a state with lower taxes.

“I think it’s very important for policymakers to be cognizant that New York’s competitive advantage is not guaranteed in that particularly wealthy people make decisions based on the impact of their bottom lines,” Friedfel said. “They may choose to leave New York and take all their income with them.”

A report released by the Citizens Budget Commission shows businesses operating in New York City are already subject to the highest corporate franchise taxes in the country when you account for the state, local and Metropolitan Transportation Authority tax rates at a collective 16.5 percent. That rate is 35 percent higher than Iowa’s corporate franchise taxes, which is the second highest in the United States, according to the budget commission.