The Bloomberg administration is failing to meet the needs of the city’s record number of immigrants, community leaders planned to testify today at City Hall.

Last year the city designated $2.8 million for an Immigrant Opportunity Initiative meant to boost community-based services to the city’s more than 2.9 million foreign-born residents. To the disappointment of immigrant groups, the mayor did not include the allotment in the preliminary budget issued last week.

At the hearing, where the City Council will evaluate the services the initiative has provided, immigrant leaders plan to testify about shortages in key services such as English classes, translation services, and legal assistance.

While the number of adult New Yorkers who lack proficiency in English has reached more than 1.5 million, of a total adult population of 5.9 million, only about 50,000 classroom seats are available, according to a study by the New York Immigration Coalition, one of the groups scheduled to testify.

Citing an increase of about 800,000 immigrants in the past decade, the chief executive officer of Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of New York, Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, said English classes were one of the most pressing needs he sees in the parishes he serves.

“New York City has always been very responsive to immigrants and has provided funds to immigrants,” Monsignor Sullivan, who will testify at today’s hearing, said. “But with the growing number of immigrants there is a need to keep pace and to increase funding simply to provide services to the newcomer.”

“There’s an inadequacy of services on two fronts,” said Andrew Friedman, a founder of Make the Road by Walking, an immigrant advocacy group in Bushwick.

“There’s an inadequacy in terms of accessibility of the city services that already exist,” Mr. Friedman added. “There’s not the kind of language assistance infrastructure that would need to be in place for the one in four New Yorkers who don’t speak English to access the services the city already has in place. And then there is an inadequacy of particular services that immigrant communities need, such as English-as-a-Second classes.”

The mayor’s commissioner of immigrant affairs, Guillermo Linares, declined to comment in advance of his testimony at today’s hearing.

Noting various actions Mayor Bloomberg has taken to assist immigrants, such as Executive Order 41, improved language assistance policies in public hospitals, and a translation and interpretation unit within the Department of Education, Mr. Friedman added, “There has been progress in the last five years, but in many ways it’s come as a result of strong pushes from immigrant communities, and there’s far too little progress given the rapidly changing demographics and the rapidly increasing needs for services.”