Even with financial and budget constraints, many of the city’s agencies have either maintained or improved on performance since the beginning of the Bloomberg administration, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s management report, released last Friday.
The report measures areas like crime, cleanliness and public health between when Bloomberg took office in 2002 and the 2011 fiscal year. Overall, nearly 65 percent of these areas that have been tracked have either met or exceeded the 2003 fiscal year performance report, which was issued following Bloomberg’s first year in office.
Bloomberg praised city agencies for their work despite budget cuts hampering their finances.
“Even as New York City is emerging from the most difficult fiscal crisis in a generation, the data show that City agencies continue to provide the high-quality services that New Yorkers have rightly come to expect,” Bloomberg said. “The 2011 data clearly show that tight budgets don’t have to mean fewer or worse services.”
According to the report, crimes like major felonies and grand larceny auto have declined since 2003. Major felonies have decreased from 147,669 in 2003 to 105,496 this year and grand larceny auto has dropped to 9,647 this year, from 24,711 eight years ago.
Education has also seen an improvement over the eight year span, according to the mayor. Over 57 percent of students in grades 3 through 8 have met or exceeded standards in math this year, which compares to 41.9 percent in 2003.
Despite positive long term improvements, some categories of crime have seen an increase this year compared to 2010.
The number of rapes this year increased to 1,138 from 860 last year. Robbery also has risen from 18,794 to 19,495 in 2011.
The average response time to crimes in progress has jumped from seven and a half minutes to almost eight and a half minutes.
City Councilman and Chairman of the Public Safety Committee Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria) told NY1 that it’s time to put more cops back on the streets.
“This is the inevitable result of having almost 7,000 less officers from September 11, 2001,” Vallone said to NY1. “We need 1,800 cops into the academy January 1.”
