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Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg focused on the incremental rather than the innovative in his annual State of the City address on Wednesday, pledging to avoid any new spending, to consolidate government operations and to take modest steps in helping small businesses and minority youths.
It was a decidedly more low-key, less ambitious presentation than those Mr. Bloomberg has made in the past.
He promised to expand job training services and to organize financing fairs for immigrant small-business owners. He said five banks and five credit unions had volunteered to set up a program featuring bank accounts with no minimum balances or hidden fees. And in the city’s latest effort to help stanch the foreclosure crisis, he vowed to establish a $10 million fund that would help up to 1,000 families refinance their mortgages.
Mr. Bloomberg, who won re-election to a third term by a narrower-than-expected margin in November, said that a new interagency task force would “consolidate,” “centralize” and “reduce” government operations. Among the goals, he said, would be cutting the number of city vehicles, and shrinking the city’s office space by 10 percent — or 1.2 million square feet — over four years. The trim in office space would save $36 million in rent, and $4 million in energy, each year.
He delivered his address — his ninth since taking office in 2002 — at Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens. And in a nod to “New York, New York,” which was played over a loudspeaker before and after his 45-minute speech, Mr. Bloomberg borrowed liberally from the lyrics: “As someone once said, ‘We’re going to make a brand new start of it. We’re going to do more than ever — more than any city has ever done — to find innovative ways to improve people’s everyday lives.”
In some ways, the speech was a bit of a departure for the mayor. He largely steered clear of anything controversial, unlike earlier addresses, which dealt with subjects like education, property taxes, ground zero, homelessness and term limits.
There was no slick video narrated by Ric Burns or a marching band, as was the case last time. He made no part of his speech in Spanish, as had been his habit when he was running for a third term last year.
Instead, Mr. Bloomberg offered a menu of grind-it-out ideas designed to help New Yorkers, against a backdrop of a $4 billion budget deficit and a national recession. “It was a different kind of speech,” said Bill de Blasio, the city’s new public advocate. “It was definitely incrementalist. A lot of the big-picture issues were kept to a minimum.”
Perhaps the most notable proposal was Mr. Bloomberg’s plan to combine the Department of Juvenile Justice with the Administration for Children’s Services.
“Make no mistake: there will be no coddling,” Mr. Bloomberg said, referring to youngsters in the juvenile justice system. “This is an anti-crime strategy based on real data, and we’ll measure results carefully.”
Two small agencies — the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, and NYC TV — will also be merged. And at the Human Resources Administrations, two back offices will be combined, Mr. Bloomberg announced, resulting in an expected annual savings of $3.9 million.
And, in the kind of language that was typical of his tenure building his financial services firm, Bloomberg L.P., the mayor — who is the wealthiest person in the city — said that technology could improve government efficiency and customer service. He plans to start a pilot program to install GPS devices on city school buses. He also said the city would hand out bracelets that would enable families to locate the elderly or children.
Mr. Bloomberg, who toyed with the notion of a presidential run in 2008, and was later reported to be on Senator John McCain’s short list of vice presidential contenders, did not completely confine himself to local issues.
Citing President Obama’s announcement that undocumented Haitians who were in the United States before the Jan. 12 earthquake would get temporary protective status and be allowed to remain legally for 18 months, Mr. Bloomberg said that the city would lead an effort to help Haitian New Yorkers get legal and administrative support to apply for such status.
“That will allow them to find legal employment here, and allow more money to find its way back home to their loved ones,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
Afterward, city officials offered mixed assessments. Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, praised Mr. Bloomberg’s commitment to small businesses, and his attempts to deal with foreclosure problems.
John C. Liu, the new city comptroller, commended Mr. Bloomberg for focusing on small businesses and immigrants, but said that the foreclosure plan sounded like “rhetoric we’ve heard before.” Mr. Bloomberg should have been more critical of Wall Street, Mr. Liu added.
Meanwhile, Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, and Rubén Díaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, expressed surprise and disappointment that Mr. Bloomberg did not say anything about establishing a commission to overhaul the City Charter — a commission that is expected to change the term-limits law.
Of course, Mr. Bloomberg being Mr. Bloomberg, a few verbal miscues were on display, as well. Beyond botching a couple of names, Mr. Bloomberg may have committed a bit of a Freudian slip when he summed up his speech as the “State of Our Union,” and not the State of the City.
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