It took slightly longer for cops to respond to 911 calls last year, according to the latest report card on city agencies issued yesterday by Mayor Bloomberg's office.
The semi-annual Mayor's Management Report found that radio cars got to emergencies in an average of 7.5 minutes in the year ending June 30, up from 7.2 minutes the previous fiscal year.
Bronx residents had to wait the longest, 8.3 minutes. Residents covered by Manhattan South precincts received the quickest service, 6.5 minutes.
Officials attributed the downturn to last winter's severe snowfalls.
"That has to slow you down," said one official.
But Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens), chairman of the City Council's Public Saftey Committee, charged slower response times are due to budget cuts.
"Police response times are up because the number of officers on the street is down," Vallone said.
"Rapes continue to go up while robberies are increasing for the first time in years," he added. "This is more proof that our police force should have been held harmless from budget cuts."
But response times were still down sharply from 12 minutes in 2000, when perplexed police brass suggested patrol cops weren't accurately recording arrival times.
"Response times rose slightly but remain much better than they were in 2001, 2000 and 1999," said police spokesman Michael O'Looney.
"That is important, considering the department had several thousand more police officers in those previous years."
Response times were also off a few ticks at the Fire Department, falling from 4 minutes, 14 seconds to 4 minutes, 17 seconds. Civilian fire deaths increased from 98, a historic low, to 109.
"The number of fires are now down so low in this city that one terrible fire really skews the statistics," the mayor said.
Those setbacks aside, Bloomberg said most city agencies deserved high grades for their performances at a time when the work force was shrinking by 17,000.
"Overall, I was pleased that we're going in the right direction," he said.
Mayoral aides said agencies hit 68 percent of their performance targets.
The Department of Homeless Services was singled out for praise. It placed 5,289 families in permanent housing, up an impressive 46 percent from 3,614 placements in fiscal 2002.
The mayor has been proclaiming for months that there is no ticket blitz - and the numbers backed him up.
The NYPD reported writing 8,049,000 tickets for motor-vehicle violations, a 2 percent drop.
Sanitation and other summonses heard before the Environmental Control Board jumped by 1.7 percent, from 649,791 to 660,828.
But not all the figures were rosy.
* The absence rate at the Fire Department, a troubling issue to City Hall, jumped from 7.31 percent to 8.18 percent - an average of 20.4 days per firefighter.
* The citywide vehicle fleet, which officials are trying to contain, grew from 27,483 to 27,675.
* The number of complaints to the police Civilian Complaint Review Board shot up 24 percent, from 4,122 to 5,118.
