NEW YORK (PIX11) -- The New York City mayor's office is backing off its dire predictions about the city budget and the migrant crisis — describing both as stable.
On Wednesday, budget cuts were canceled, and on Thursday, top city officials offered a more detailed explanation as to why.
The city is seeing much fewer migrants being bused to town in recent weeks, with 1,300 coming last week, according to City Hall. President Joe Biden is also weighing executive action to reduce border crossings.
"We are excited," said Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom about the prospect of Biden taking action. She has managed the migrant crisis for New York City for a year and a half.
However, Williams-Isom explained that the situation in New York City has already grown more stable in the last few weeks due to fewer arrivals, plus eviction notices encouraging more people to move on from city shelters more quickly.
Williams-Isom said that with migrant crisis stability has come budget stability.
"We are very happy that we did not have to raise taxes," Williams-Isom said.
The announcement Wednesday regarding the next round of potential cuts to garbage pickup, police and other essential services completes a chaotic couple of months.
First, Mayor Eric Adams and his team had forecast major cuts to pay for billions in migrant spending, only to slowly roll back proposed cuts, before eventually canceling future cuts altogether.
The entire time, critics said New York was on better fiscal footing than the mayor and his team were saying.
Now the Adams administration is saying tax revenue has exceeded expectations, and it has been able to slash the cost of caring for the migrants themselves.
Numerous representatives for the Adams administration defended the budget back-and-forth, saying they had to do what was necessary to protect the city's finances -- pointing to positive credit ratings by groups like Moody's.
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