Mayor Adams Says Funds Shifted from Crumbling BQE Because DOT is not “Ready to Put the Shovel in the Ground”

By Yehudit Garmaise

After Mayor Eric Adams and DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez shrank the $225.1 million budget for the BQE repairs to $44.6 million, advocates who have fought for years to repair the highway fear that the roadway could become another “Surfside,” G-d-forbid.

“This news is shocking and deeply concerning,” said Lara Birnback, the executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association (BHA), which has been asking the city and state to repair the 70-year-old roadway for years. “The idea that the city isn’t doing everything in its power to prevent a predictable catastrophe is reckless and unconscionable.

Mayor Adams, however, said Sunday that he shifted the money out of the budget because the DOT is not yet ready to “put the shovel in the ground.”

The $180.5 million that has been removed from the project will be re-allocated into the later years of the nine-year plan to repair the roadway.

“The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) pointed out that we don’t want to just have a padded [budget] stating we allocated X number of dollars, which you are not going to spend during this fiscal year,” explained the mayor who wants agencies to have only money on the books that they are actually ready to spend.

“If the agencies involved were able to spend the money, we will make sure that money is available to be spent, but there is no reason for walking around with money in your pocket that you are not spending or not using: that makes no sense,” explained the mayor, who added that he will soon sit down with Councilmember Lincoln Restler and the OMB to determine which agencies are ready to spend the money allocated to them. 

“We want the project done, but we also want to do the entire stretch, the mayor said.

“It is not just about one part of the BQE. We have Williamsburg, we have Sunset Park. “It is about all of those communities that must use this opportunity to rethink that stretch of roadway.”