State Budget Has Funds For Local Queens Projects
BY JOHN TOSCANO

Assemblymember Catherine Nolan, (D- Ridgewood), Education Committee chair, and state Senator Frank Padavan (R- C Bellerose) said in separate reports that the state budget education package increased by $1.8 billion to a total of $21 billion. New York City's share comes in at $8 billion.

Queens lawmakers reported last week that the borough came away with a goodly variety of benefits to libraries, cultural institutions, homeowner mortgages, and other areas under the $122 billion budget passed last Wednesday, as well as a share of billiondollar allotments of public school funding.

Assemblymember Catherine Nolan, (D- Ridgewood), Education Committee chair, and state Senator Frank Padavan (R- C Bellerose) said in separate reports that the state budget education package increased by $1.8 billion to a total of $21 billion. New York City's share comes in at $8 billion.

"We have kept the promise to education as required by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision," Nolan said. "In the face of economic difficulties, this historic level of funding demonstrates our commitment to schools, our children and the future."

Padavan declared, "Year after year, we are making the necessary and smart investments in the future of our students throughout the City of New York while faced with tough economic challenges.

Padavan also noted that the 2008-09 state budget continues to help fund the $13.1 billion capital plan for New York City schools. The five-year plan will result in 66,000 new classroom seats with an additional 10,000 seats being added from renovating administration space to classroom space. "We are well on our way toward achieving more modernized and smaller classrooms in our schools through maintaining the commitment in the 2008-09 state budget to the fiveyear capital plan. When you couple the record increase in education aid with the progress of the capital plan it is crystal clear that the education of children throughout the city is an unwavering priority for me and the entire state legislature," Padavan said.

Assemblymember Rory Lancman (D- Flushing) also hailed the level of education aid for the city, as well as funding in the budget for health care and affordable housing.

Lancman's list of Queens budget goodies included:

•$70 million in capital assistance for restoration of the Fitzgerald Gymnasium at Queens College.

•$15 million in funding to the Queens Museum of Art and $6 million in funding for renovations at the Queens Borough Public Library Flushing branch.

•Expansion of the Child Health Plus insurance program to cover more children in Queens and the other boroughs

•Financial counseling and legal assistance to homeowners with subprime mortgage and mortgage default and foreclosure problems, funded at $25 million

•$100 million to build affordable housing.

"This budget delivers for the people of New York and Queens in particular in the critical areas of education, health care and affordable housing and it does so without imposing new taxes on working New Yorkers," Lancman said. "Given the dark financial clouds on our horizon, this budget, which spends less than the governor's program budget, strikes the right balance between belt-tightening and investing in what matters- health care, education and housing."

State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky (D- Flushing), the ranking Democrat on the senate Higher Education Committee, said the new budget continued priority funding for the State University (SUNY) and the City University (CUNY) systems.

Stavisky said the new budget will hold the line on tuition at SUNY, with an annual tuition of $4,350, and at CUNY, where annual tuition is $4,000.

The budget also authorized nearly $6 billion of capital funding for SUNY and CUNY and community colleges.

Governor David Paterson noted that the budget does not include a personal income tax increase and reflects $1.8 billion in recurring spending cuts and $1.5 billion in recurring revenue actions.