By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

In this season of joy and celebration, we have much to look forward to, and I want to wish our members Happy Holidays and a healthy and peaceful New Year. The January swearing in of Bill de Blasio as our next Mayor, along with the elevation of Scott Stringer to City Comptroller and Letitia James to the office of Public Advocate, mark a progressive turning point that we helped achieve.

But we cannot afford to be complacent. It will take more than hope in the future to undo the damage done to our city by the outgoing administration's outright hostility to the public sector workforce.

On his way out of office, Mayor Michael Bloomberg continued to project the phony image of a prudent fiscal manager by announcing he was leaving the new mayor a balanced budget. Claiming to have balanced the budget while leaving the contracts of 300,000 municipal workers hanging is both reckless and dishonest. Outgoing Comptroller John Liu, the city's top financial watchdog, called the Bloomberg legacy "a fiscal mess of historic proportions."

With Associate Director Henry Garrido coordinating our effort, DC 37 has been preparing comprehensive recommendations to give the mayor-elect the kind of practical and imaginative insights that the departing mayor ignored at his own peril. Our union has worked closely with Bill de Blasio over the years, and we know him to be the kind of leader who will listen to working people.

At the bargaining table, we will speak with one voice for all of our locals and make it clear that we need retroactive pay increases to make up for the rising costs of rent, food and transportation. The sad reality is, like the rest of working America, we have lost economic ground even as the banks that wrecked the economy have continued to prosper. The increased cost of living has had the effect of a 9½ percent pay cut since our last raise, and we are suffering.

Opportunity for the new mayor to roll back the damage

As a public-service union we speak for the needs of all New Yorkers as well as our members, who are also taxpayers.

We will urge the new administration to end the overreliance on outsourcing, a policy that has led to massive waste and easy fraud, while giving unaccountable private contractors too much control of vital public services.

It is time for our new mayor to roll back the outgoing administration's attacks on the municipal civil service workforce through layoffs, cuts and contracting out. A strong civil service merit system protects the public by promoting qualified and tested personnel over the politically connected.

Pre-kindergarten classes and after-school programs for all children will cost money, but these are economic development investments in New York City that offer hope to families who want their children to have productive futures.

We will show the new mayor how the city can raise billions of dollars without new taxes and without depending on Albany's approval. His administration can collect fees that businesses already owe the city and cancel tax giveaways, such as undeserved property tax exemptions among those documented in the city's Tax Expenditure Report.

The pro-business Citizens Budget Commission has warned against hiking property taxes. We are not asking for an increase, just for corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share. We know many large property owners have learned to game the system to block justified assessment increases. The time has come to end this rip-off of average taxpayers.

As 2013 draws to a close, I am grateful for the opportunity the coming years present, and I am resolved to make every day count.