[NYRESCUE]

The city's police force would be slashed by nearly 1,300 cops -- to its lowest level in two decades -- under a $63.6 billion spending plan Mayor Bloomberg released yesterday that includes massive cuts to virtually every city agency.

To save $55.4 million, the NYPD plans not to replace 1,292 uniformed officers once they leave or retire, leaving the department with 32,817.

CITY HELPS RAISE $1.2M FOR HAITI EARTHQUAKE RELIEF

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the reduced manpower would pose a "challenge" to the department, which has been registering lower crime levels year after year.
Chad Rachman/N.Y.PostMayor Michael Bloomberg
Chad Rachman/N.Y.Post
Mayor Michael Bloomberg

"We're down to numbers that are close to what we were in 1990, when we had a million fewer people living in this city," he said.

He noted that in 2001, the NYPD had 40,800 officers.

"That's an 8,000 police-officer reduction in 10 years' time," he said.

City Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens), chairman of the Public Safety Committee, warned that police cuts would eventually impact public safety.

"Trying to find a breaking point of the NYPD is a dangerous game to play," he said.

But with a $4.9 billion budget gap to close for fiscal 2011, Bloomberg said there was little choice but to reduce the city's 305,000-person workforce by 4,286, including 834 layoffs.

The mayor pointed out that the city's four uniformed agencies and the school system account for 84 percent of all personnel costs.

The Fire Department faces the loss of 400 firefighters through attrition, the possible closing of as many as 20 fire companies and, for the first time, the shuttering of a couple of firehouses.

Asked whether that could lead to longer response times, Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano responded, "It could. Less firehouses will have an operational impact on the city," he said.

To close the deficit, the mayor rolled over $2.9 billion from this year, sliced agency spending by $1.6 billion over 18 months and upped his revenue estimate by $1 billion.

But further cuts would be unavoidable, Bloomberg cautioned, if Albany approves the $1.3 billion reduction in aid proposed by Gov. Paterson and if teachers and principals don't accept a 2 percent pay hike instead of the 4 percent they were anticipating.

The City Council will have to approve most of Bloomberg's plan in June, before the start of the fiscal year July 1, and it was likely that there would be sweeping changes once the state budget was adopted.

"We acted responsibly," the mayor said. "The state is the problem because we don't control the state. Everyone knows . . . they have not been as fiscally responsible as they should have been."

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew quickly denounced Bloomberg's proposal as "unacceptable," and the head of the principals union, Ernest Logan, said he wouldn't negotiate salaries in public.

Bloomberg hasn't been able to win substantial concessions from municipal unions in his eight years in office, but he expressed confidence that they would cooperate this year because the alternative was massive layoffs.

"This time, the consequences of getting it is more calamitous for the unions," the mayor said. "That's the calculus they have to decide."

The city's neediest residents stood to suffer the most.

A 24-hour drop-in center for the homeless in Manhattan was slated for closing, the average caseload for child-welfare workers would increase from 9.5 to 10.6, and $4.2 million would be removed from staff dealing with HIV/AIDS patients.

Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg and Yoav Gonen

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