Good morning. It's Friday. We'll look at a part of Mayor Eric Adams's proposed $103 billion budget that may upset some parents with young children. We'll also see what nurses gained in the agreement that ended the three-day strike at two hospitals. |
 | | James Estrin/The New York Times |
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Austerity was the watchword on Thursday when Mayor Eric Adams proposed a $103 billion municipal budget but said he had only "limited city resources." Cautioning that the city faces a long list of challenges, from multibillion-dollar deficits to expenses associated with migrants who continue to arrive, he said he was focused on addressing crime, housing affordability and the sense that the city is dirty. |
His new spending plan represents a $2 billion increase from the current budget. But he has called for cuts in some programs — cuts, he acknowledged on Thursday, that critics would oppose. "As mayor, the buck stops with me," he said. "It is my responsibly to keep our city on a stable path." |
One program that he wants to trim, at least in monetary terms, is the city's free preschool initiative for 3-year-olds. I asked Emma G. Fitzsimmons, our City Hall bureau chief, to explain what he has in mind and how families will be affected. |
One of the largest cuts in the mayor's new budget is for free preschool for 3-year-olds, known as 3-K for All. How much does he want to cut and what does it mean for the program? |
The mayor wants to reduce the budget for 3-K by $567 million. The program was expected to become universal this year, and now that's not happening. Some families with young children are really disappointed. |
Why is the mayor cutting the 3-K funding? |
The program was a top priority under Mayor Bill de Blasio, but he didn't identify a permanent funding source. Now Mayor Adams is arguing that federal pandemic aid is running out and the city is facing a budget deficit, and we can't afford to keep expanding 3-K. The Adams administration has also said that not all of the current seats are being used, and that's due in part to an uneven distribution of centers among different neighborhoods. |
What does this mean for families? |
Free 3-K can be life-changing for parents, who often spend more than $20,000 per year on child care. Mayor de Blasio publicly promised that every 3-year-old would have a seat this September, and families were hoping to get some financial relief in a city that is very expensive. If they don't get a 3-K offer, they'll have to continue to pay for private child care or one parent might not be able to return to work. One of my sons is turning 3 soon, and we're hoping that he can start 3-K this fall. |
What about universal prekindergarten for 4-year-olds? How is that going? |
Pre-K is universal, and it has been hugely popular with parents and viewed as a national model. But our colleague Troy Closson reported recently on major problems with the program under Mayor Adams. Many child care providers aren't getting paid on time, and there is turmoil within the city agency that oversees the program. |
Expect rain throughout the day and wind gusts. Temperatures will start in the mid-50s, then drop. At night, it will be mostly cloudy, with temperatures reaching the mid-30s. |
In effect until Monday (Martin Luther King's Birthday). |
 | | Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times |
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Nurses end their strike after hospitals agree to more staffing |
 | | Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times |
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The 7,000 nurses at two hospitals who ended their three-day strike on Thursday can look forward to a 19.1 percent raise over three years. But they knew that was coming — it had been largely worked out before they took to the picket lines. |
The stumbling block was staffing at the hospitals, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai in Manhattan. The nurses complained that patient care was being compromised because the hospitals were not putting enough nurses in intensive care units and emergency rooms and on floors where patients need less critical treatment. |
Nurses in intensive care units at the two hospitals said they had routinely been assigned to care for three critically ill patients at once, even when patients should have received one-on-one attention. Some emergency room nurses said they were often given 15 patients, sometimes more. Benny Mathew, an emergency-room nurse at Montefiore who is an official with the union, said that during colleagues' lunch breaks, he routinely looked at 30 patients. |
"We go home feeling bad we couldn't do a proper job because we couldn't do everything the patient needed," he said. |
The staffing issues reflected economic realities, including cost cutting that was driven in part by low Medicaid reimbursement rates. The rise of outpatient surgery centers and ambulatory care in recent years have also drawn away nurses who once worked for hospitals. But it also reflected economic choices by the hospitals and how they spend their funds. |
The pandemic compounded the supply-and-demand problem: many nurses resigned because they felt burned out after caring for Covid-19 patients or took jobs as travel nurses that paid more. Some 52 percent in a nationwide survey — released in March by the American Nurses Foundation and the American Nurses Association — said they were considering leaving their current jobs primarily because of insufficient staffing. |
Only California has regulated the nurse-patient ratio with legislation, and three of my colleagues — Sharon Otterman, Joseph Goldstein and Jenny Gross — write that the ratios at hospitals there could make New York nurses envious. California hospitals assign one nurse for every four patients in the emergency room and one nurse for every five patients on regular inpatient floors. |
In New York, the problem has been compounded by hundreds of unfilled nursing jobs. Union leaders said Montefiore had more than 700 open positions — 20 percent of the number working before the strike. At Mount Sinai, with 3,600 working nurses, 500 nursing slots were open before the strike. |
"You should have enough nurses to care for you, no matter who you are," said Nancy Hagans, the president of the nurses' union, the New York State Nurses Association. |
The nurses' union said their new contract sets staff ratios for inpatient units and provides an enforcement mechanism, a first for the emergency department at Montefiore, according to Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, a nurse on the negotiating committee there. She said those ratios would equal the ratios on other medical floors. |
The union said new incentives and programs will be set up at Montefiore to help recruit Bronx nurses who can look toward long careers there. The two hospitals said in separate statements that they welcomed the agreements with the union that ended the strike. Mount Sinai called its deal with the nurses "fair and responsible, and it puts the patients first." |
It was about 50 years ago, and three friends and I were returning from a 10-day canoe trip in the Canadian wilderness. We drove nine hours straight to get home and were exhausted and hungry when we got to New York. |
Then Larry said the magic words: "Wo Hop!" |
We all nodded in agreement and headed directly to our go-to Chinese restaurant. It was about 3 o'clock in the morning when we arrived at 17 Mott Street, tired, bedraggled and famished. |
We trudged into the restaurant, grabbed a table and proceeded to wolf down shrimp congee, sweet and sour pork and shrimp curry noodles. |
Food never tasted so good. |
Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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