NEW YORK, NY January 26, 2007 —Mayor Bloomberg's preliminary budget plan has something for everyone, made possible by an almost $4 billion surplus. Yet, as WNYC's Bob Hennelly reports future mayors are going to have a tougher time balancing the books.

REPORTER: This year Mayor Michael Bloomberg's past tight fisted budget policy insured the city could realize a healthy surplus thanks to tax revenues from eye popping profits on Wall Street and a boom in commercial real estate. But the Mayor was the first to concede one great year can't reverse a trend that will make it increasingly hard for the city to control it's own fiscal destiny.

BLOOMBERG: But the non-controllable expenditures pensions, health benefits, and debt service when we came into office was a couple of billion dollars lower than the controllable and now is a few billion dollars more than the controllable and growing.

REPORTER: Bottom line - the more non-controllable expenses the city is burdened with the less fiscal flexibility it has to met future challenges. By 2011, these so-called non-controllables will claim $26 billion of the city's budget. For WNYC, I'm Bob Hennelly.