"Wear a Sweater if You're Chilly!": Bloomberg Tells City Workers

Mayor lays out some tough measures in the face of growing deficits

Updated 8:30 AM EST, Thu, Nov 20, 2008

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If city workers can't deal with cost-cutting measures such as less heat, the mayor suggests they wear a sweater.

Nothing like a budget crisis to bring to out the flinty New Englander in Mayor Bloomberg.

"Wear a sweater if you're chilly!" the mayor admonished city workers as he ordered city thermostats turned down low despite the freezing cold, according to the Daily News.

In the next breath, the mayor also warned city workers to gird for massive layoffs.

"You're trying to plan, if you're a city worker, whether you're going to have a job. You have to start worrying about that and plan," Bloomberg said, according to the News. "There's an awful lot of the 300,000 municipal employees who have got to start worrying about their jobs."

And to top it off, the mayor won't back down from his fight with the council over the $400 property tax rebates that are supposed to be mailed out to homeowners. The mayor has tried to repeal them. The council still wants to send them out.

His own budget director admitted last week that the mayor can't make that call without the council's approval, but Bloomberg still pushed on.

"I understand exactly what the Council said. We issue the checks. And this is not something that's going to be decided by litigation," he said, referring to lawsuit filed by several Council members to force the mayor to send out the checks.

"We have no money," said the mayor, according to the New York Post. "I think that's what you have to understand. This is not a legal issue; this is a fiscal issue."