LPC Budget Update

As you may know, Mayor Bloomberg released his Fiscal Year 2009 Budget for the City of New York a couple of weeks ago. This $58 Billion budget contains many cuts to city agencies in response to projected budget shortfalls related to the ongoing mortgage crisis and an uncertain stock market.

While we had hoped that the Landmarks Preservation Commission would be spared the budget axe after receiving much-needed additional funds over the past couple of years, this did not turn out to be the case. The Mayor has proposed a $4.3 Million budget for the coming fiscal year which is nearly $300,000 less than the budget that was adopted for LPC last year and more than $650,000 less than the modified budget that LPC is currently operating under, suggesting that the gains that were won for LPC’s over the past two years have now been lost. This at a time when permit applications before LPC are at the highest levels in decades.

Please stay tuned as we continue to analyze the impact of these cuts on LPC's work. In addition, we will be meeting with other landmark advocates soon to develop our plan to fight these cuts over the next six months. Stay tuned!