Big spender!
That’s the tag Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign is slapping on Democratic rival William Thompson, charging that the city comptroller’s “pie-in-the-sky” education proposals will cost the Big Apple more than $6 billion over four years, and $252 million for the state.
And that’s in addition to capital construction costs of roughly $39 billion needed to realize such ideas as smaller class sizes, according to a campaign analysis of the funds required for Thompson’s plan.
The analysis, provided to The Post, claims:
* Making pre-K “truly universal,” as Thompson called for, would cost $300 million a year — $260 million from the city alone, and the rest from the state.
* Mandatory kindergarten would tack another $63 million a year onto the city budget, and $63 million onto the state budget.
* Extending the school year by one week would cost $365 million a year, and longer school days and Saturday hours for struggling kids would add $200 million.
* Creating smaller classes would cost roughly $650 million a year plus $39 billion for construction.
“The speech was a mixture of bad ideas that would surrender the gains students have made over the last eight years, mischaracterizations of the mayor’s record, and pie-in-the-sky proposals,” the campaign analysis says, adding that Bloomberg’s own ideas are superior.
Thompson campaign manager Eddy Castell said, “Much like the numbers Republican Mike Bloomberg uses to talk about his record, the cost projection . . . is nothing short of fiction.”
He said Thompson’s own campaign breakdown estimates costs of about $925 million per year.
Castell insisted new construction is already mostly budgeted for, and claimed that ending “wasteful” Department of Education contracts could cover most of the rest.
Team Bloomberg claims Thompson has already pitched taxes and fees for other initiatives, meaning these ideas would be tough to pay for.