”The vast majority of these savings have been pruning low hanging fruit. Reestimating the costs of what they plan to do anyway,” said Andrew Rein, President of the Citizens Budget Commission.

The nonpartisan Citizens Budget Committee warned the city’s budget laid bare the “stark and potentially dark fiscal reality” facing the Big Apple.

The city has not authorized a lien sale since 2021 because it is politically unpopular, but Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, said the sale has been effective in “reducing delinquency and generating that critical revenue.”

Champeny added that the DOB has struggled with extremely high job vacancies throughout the pandemic, with 24 percent of its budgeted positions unfilled before the last round of budget cuts a year ago. Like many agencies, it struggles to compete with higher-paying jobs in the private sector that may allow more work-from-home days.

Andrew Rein, head of the Citizens Budget Commission, said part of the reason police overtime has received so much scrutiny over the years is because overtime costs for the city’s uniformed agencies in general have consistently run over budget through the years.

"The other monitors have a little more freedom to say where they think the revenues may fall, given that there's little downside risk if they're wrong. The city comptroller, the (Independent Budget Office), the City Council, the state comptroller – they're all slightly higher than (Office of Management and Budget) on the forecast.”

In 2010 — the last time a state budget ran past the city’s deadline — then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg opted to reflect elements of the governor’s plan, according to Ana Champney of the Citizens Budget Commission. Bloomberg then held an extra budgeting session during the summer once the details from Albany were known.

Patrick Orecki, the director of state studies at Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), a nonprofit fiscal watchdog, said the state should be seeking other revenue sources without relying so heavily on the wealthiest residents.

“There’s no question that the city has thus far failed to use the opportunity to use these labor agreements to reduce ongoing costs,” said Andrew Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

“It’s fairly easy to make a case that most things do have some fiscal impact, and therefore that they deserve inclusion in the budget, even if 99.9% of its substance is nonfiscal,” said Patrick Orecki of the independent Citizens Budget Commission.

Surely not us, nor anyone who understood that, according to figures the Citizens Budget Commission handed out, the City’s Department of Education shells out more than $37,000 per year to “educate” a student and that figure is expected to rise to $41,000 (if we’re lucky) by 2026.

But in an April 14 analysis, the Citizens’ Budget Commission found that out of the $3 billion in budget cuts achieved through previous savings plans implemented by the city — the Program to Eliminate the Gap in February 2022 and November 2022, as well as the Vacancy Reduction Plan in January 2023 — the reduction in spending that affects city services is $200 million, or 0.3 percent of the budget.