The city’s overall job vacancy rate was 7.7 percent as of March — five times higher than in recent years, according to the most recent data from the Citizens Budget Commission.

“We definitely think that there was a need to right-size the work force,” said Ana Champeny, vice president of research at the Citizens Budget Commission. “But attrition is a blunt tool and the city has lost staff in key areas, which is now negatively affecting service delivery.”

A May 2021 CBC analysis of city budget documents showed that 3K expansion would cost $334 million in fiscal year 2022, $470 million in fiscal year 2023 and $753 million in fiscal year 2024. It was expected to cost the same in 2025, with the tab split between federal and city funds, the report states. At the time, the CBC questioned the program’s sustainability, noting the federal stimulus funds will run out in fiscal year 2026.

“In fiscal year ‘26, the city budget only funds half of the expansion cost with city money and has not identified a replacement on the federal side for the federal funds that are no longer there,” Champeny added.

“I’ve convened a group of budget watchdogs, including the Comptroller’s Office, the Independent Budget Office and the Citizens Budget Commission, to help find the funds,” Brewer said.

According to the fiscal watchdog organization Citizens Budget Commission, 88% of the NYPD’s budget consists in spending on personal service (salaries and wages, including overtime), while the remaining 12% is eaten up by non-personal service spending such as contract costs, operating expenses for equipment, and vehicle maintenance costs

“Including depreciation, from a strict accounting sense, makes logical sense,” said Citizens Budget Commission Executive Director Andrew Rein. “When you have an asset, you use up some of it every year. And there’s a cost to that. On the flip side, when you are doing comparative analysis, and we did our ferry analysis a few years ago, we used these national standards so we could compare systems and know how expensive our system is, and the comparative data didn’t include that. So that’s a totally reasonable position for EDC to have.”



But Rein added that if the EDC is going to be transparent about the operating costs and per-rider subsidies, it will have to include the debt service on the capital expenditures it has made to keep the system running.



“If you want to understand how much the system really costs New Yorkers every year, as well as think about what the opportunity costs, if you were to spend that money on something else, you should be using the debt service costs as part of as part of your cost structure,” Rein said. “The simple version is, they’re both reasonable. But if you’re really trying to understand how much New York taxpayers are paying on an annual basis every year, you should be including the debt service cost.”

“It is a premium service, like express buses and it is also a tourist commodity,” Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, told THE CITY. “We should be pricing the ferries accordingly and that should be able to reduce that subsidy.”



The comptroller’s report follows a series of stories in THE CITY about NYC Ferry, including one in January that revealed how de Blasio’s budget office supplied a $23.2 million infusion for the service before he left City Hall at the end of 2021 — after the service had previously been funded by the EDC.



“The ferry system was eating the EDC budget,” said Rein, whose nonprofit organization detailed in a 2019 report how subsidies for NYC Ferry are among the highest in the country for comparable ferry networks.

A 2021 report from the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) using data from fiscal year 2018 had NYC Ferry’s subsidy at $10.37 behind only the city’s express bus system, which has an $11.79 subsidy per ride. That year, the Staten Island Ferry, which is free to riders, had a subsidy of $5.46, according to the CBC.

Subway rides are subsidized too — but not nearly at the level of ferry rides. On top of the $2.75 base fare, tax and toll payers provided in 2019 provided $1.05 to subsidize each subway rider, a report by the Citizens Budget Commission found.

According to the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic organization, New York’s ferry system is estimated to have one of the nation’s highest transit subsidies per ride at $9.34, compared to $1.05 for the subway.

And the commission also found that the average subsidy for each passenger in the system’s first year of operation in 2017 was $10.73, far more than the de Blasio administration’s original estimate of $6.60.

Details: De Blasio faced criticism during his mayoral tenure for shelling out tax dollars to allow New Yorkers to ride the ferry for just $2.75, the same as a subway fare. A 2019 report by the Citizen Budget Commission, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group, estimated the city subsidy at $10.73 for every passenger.

But the comptroller’s audit found that the city was paying even more than that to keep the program afloat because the de Blasio administration didn’t include all ferry-related capital expenses in its reports on operating expenses. State subsidies for commuter rail and bus riders break down to roughly $6 per rider, according to the CBC report.

Watchdogs are likewise nervous about how the work would be paid for. The Citizens Budget Commission wonders if using tax revenue from the new buildings to fund a state transportation project is the “most appropriate financing strategy.” Normally, buildings pay city property tax, which can be used for cops, teachers, parks, hospitals. Yet it’s not even clear what kind of role the city would have (if any) in the decision-making for this project.

The CBC and others also warn that such a financing scheme — which depends on future revenue from the buildings to pay for sunk costs of the project — is risky and often more expensive than other financing schemes. Those risks are only magnified by uncertain post-pandemic demand for office space. And taxpayers are sure to be on the hook for any shortfalls.

On the trail, Adams pledged to root out disorganization and reel in spending — but a record budget buoyed by high municipal spending demonstrate he did not fulfill those vows.