Dinkins’ Budget Calls for New Taxes, 16,500 Layoffs

After a year of plugging budget gaps, Mayor David N. Dinkins on Wednesday proposed a record $29.3-billion spending plan with $580 million in new or higher taxes and 16,500 layoffs to balance it.

“No one is going to be happy with this budget,” Dinkins told reporters. “Everyone is going to complain to some degree.”

The budget for fiscal year 1992, which needs City Council approval, calls for increased property taxes and income taxes and a new auto tax.

It would cut back on arts funding, delay the hiring of new police officers and double the fare on the Staten Island Ferry--again.

Among those unhappy with the plan was schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez, who denounced it because it could cost him 4,800 teachers.

“Cuts of this magnitude are tantamount to mortgaging our children’s future,” he said.

Under Dinkins’ proposal, property taxes would go up $300 million, $60 for the average homeowner and $62 for the average tenant.

New income taxes would raise $200 million, Dinkins said.

Besides the 16,500 layoffs, an additional 7,900 jobs will be lost to attrition.

The Board of Education will take the heaviest hit, with about 5,000 job cuts in the current fiscal year and an estimated 8,000 in fiscal 1992, which starts July 1, Budget Director Philip Michael said.

Of those, about 4,800 would be teachers, unless negotiations to work out furloughs with the United Federation of Teachers heads them off, he said.

Among the cuts will be an estimated 1,996 positions in libraries, contract agencies and the Health and Hospitals Corporation.

Dinkins’ program includes:

--Delaying for four weeks until the end of April the start of the next Police Academy class for 4,808 new officers.

--Doubling the round-trip fare on the Staten Island Ferry to $1, the second time in a year that it has been doubled.

--A delay in the expansion of drug treatment programs until 1993.

--A drop of $14.9 million in funding to 31 cultural institutions and $3 million to arts organizations.

Dinkins said he would replace the $15 auto use tax with a levy based on a car’s value.

The tax on an $8,000 subcompact would come to $58, and one on a $30,000 luxury sedan would be $216. The minimum tax would be $40 annually.

Dinkins would also impose a 5-cents-per-gallon tax on gasoline and diesel fuel to raise $40 million.

Dinkins, who closed three fire companies in the past month, said the Fire Department will lose no more companies, but he held out the prospect that if the economy worsens that could change.