Public Employee Press

Services shrink under Bloomberg

Families staying longer in homeless shelters, new school construction falling behind while current schools are inadequate, child welfare caseloads climbing dangerously - these are some of the findings of a recent report on the performance of city agencies.

Figures from the mayor's own citywide performance reporting system, which evaluated dozens of agencies through the fiscal year that ended June 30, show a clear falloff in services to the public.

In some of the most important areas, such as public safety and education, more performance indicators declined than improved. Police and Fire Dept. emergency responses slowed in the last year, while the number of schools that got an A on their report cards fell from 75 percent to 29 percent. It was little surprise that a recent poll found that 34 percent of New Yorkers disapprove of the way Mayor Bloomberg is handling education.

Despite overcrowding, the number of new schools being built fell to only 8 from 26 in the previous year; fewer school improvement projects were completed within budget, and more were behind schedule.

"These figures show that now is not the time to lay off school employees," said Local 372 President Santos Crespo, referring to Bloomberg's plan to fire 770 nonteaching school workers in October.

Altogether, the city figures are the measurements of a deteriorating mayoralty. But then, New Yorkers who lived through his administration's bumbling efforts after the 2010 post-Christmas blizzard or read the headlines about its huge CityTime contracting scandal don't need statistics to see that Bloomberg's claim to managerial expertise was false advertising.