With New York about to enter an era of record high debt, the city’s Independent Budget Office yesterday called on politicians to guarantee taxpayers that the $62.4 billion of new debt that will pile up over the next 10 years will be handled responsibly.

The office’s report projects that debt service, which will reach $7.2 billion in annual payments by the end of the capital plan in 2015, will account for 17 cents out of every tax dollar collected by the city.

The plan includes borrowing for new schools, health care, affordable housing, and other municipal improvement projects.

The report calls on the city to come up with a formal policy to ensure that it doesn’t take on more debt than it can service. The last time the city had an official debt policy was under Mayor Giuliani, who set ceilings for the city’s debt burden. Mayor Bloomberg’s administration does not have a similar policy, the report said.

New York City’s overall debt – currently at about $48 billion – is the largest in the country, four times larger than that of the runner-up, Chicago, which carries about $13 billion in debt.

The city’s outstanding debt as a percentage of personal income, at 25.5%, is second only to Philadelphia’s. New York City’s debt is larger than every state’s except California’s and New York’s.

A spokesman for the mayor, Jordan Barowitz, didn’t respond to the report’s specific claims, but said the matter of balancing the budget with capital expenditures was no easy task.

“There’s a delicate balance be tween building schools, repairing roads and bridges, and maintaining the infrastructure that is the basis of New York’s economic strength with paying the debt service on our longterm obligations,” he said.

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Nicole Gelinas, said the report was comprehensive but avoided the problem of the size of the debt in the first place.

“The main issue for taxpayers is not whether the debt is literally affordable, but could the vast amounts of tax dollars … be put to better use in the private sector economy,” she said.

Ms. Gelinas said the bonds issued for schools and transportation were justified, but that the market could do a better job building new housing than the city.

While the report said the city’s debt ratio trends show a “generally positive outlook for the city’s debt affordability,” it also says there could be substantial risks in the future, especially if the city hits hard economic times.

“An economic downturn in the next few years could mean difficult choices between further tax increases and cuts in those areas of spending over which the city has the most short-term control – namely, delivery of agency services,” the report said.