For those of us who are fans of the annual revue known as the New York City budget, there’s a time-tested and familiar script. In the first act, the mayor appears center stage, delivering grim soliloquies that crescendo to a battery of cuts. Act two is a dirge, as the citizenry lumbers its way to city hall to implore the mayor to relent, the city council forming a mournful chorus. In the denouement, there’s a furious surge of late-June negotiations, with the most outrageous cuts rescinded at the last minute. Everyone declares victory, except the Citizens Budget Commission, whose staccato warnings about fiscal prudence will sound a minor key until it’s time for the whole show to repeat the following year.

This year, the city hit all its cues. Mayor Eric Adams, railing against Washington, DC, and the refugee crisis, started in January by proposing various money-saving measures that made little sense even within the framework of austerity. Most notorious were the library cuts. In a $107-billion budget, the largest in the city’s history, why slash $36.2 million from the library system — an amount that would have forced many branches to reduce service while saving little money overall?

Finally, after extensive public pressure, a budget approved on the second-to-last day of June saved the libraries. The Adams administration has celebrated a budget that they claim manages to achieve savings without any layoffs or any significant reductions in city services; meanwhile, the Citizens Budget Commission warns that the budget doesn’t go far enough toward cuts and that large gaps will appear in future years.