Mayor Bloomberg yesterday presented a $52.2 billion preliminary city budget that stashes away this year’s surplus for predicted fiscal turbulence down the road and takes a crack at addressing the city’s rapidly escalating municipal health care costs.

With his re-election behind him, Mr. Bloomberg has made it clear with this budget that he is not looking to win a popularity contest. Instead, he is using the budget to address the city’s long-term fiscal problems by paying down outstanding debt and addressing the city’s huge health care and pension obligations.

While the mayor just a few months ago was predicting a $2.3 billion deficit for this fiscal year, higher-than-expected real estate transaction taxes, income taxes, and sales taxes have turned that into a $1.5 billion surplus.

Mr. Bloomberg billed the surplus as a one-shot deal and said it would not be used to roll back taxes because the city is predicting budget deficits for the next three fiscal years.

“I don’t think anybody with any sense of fiscal prudence would argue you shouldn’t worry about something that is only a year and a half or a year and five months away,” he said.

The budget gaps are “staring us in the face,” he said.

The mayor’s budget maintains much city spending at about the same level, calls for the creation of a $2 billion health care fund to cover medical costs for city retirees, and includes a proposal to renew the $400 property tax rebate for another year.

Mr. Bloomberg, who made his multibillion-dollar fortune in the private sector, used the words “worrisome” and “scary” when referring the city’s socalled fixed expenses, such as health care costs, pensions, debt, and Medicaid contributions.

“If we don’t act now to meet and control these future costs, they will soon overwhelm the city government’s ability to pay for police and fire protection, schools,parks,and other essential services,” he told reporters in the Blue Room at City Hall.

In his State of the City address last week, Mr. Bloomberg said it was time to work with labor unions to negotiate pension changes and health care contributions from city employees.

The immediate feedback on the mayor’s presentation was mixed, though most agreed it was a departure from past mayoral budgets, often driven by political considerations.

The president of the Citizens Budget Commission, Diana Fortuna, said the mayor was “putting the city’s longterm interest ahead of short-term political gain.”

“The New York City budget has been on a rollercoaster for years,” Ms. Fortuna said. “When times are good we bid up the spending, we go crazy, we have a party, and then the tough times hit and we’ve got to tighten our belts and things are very difficult.”

She said stowing away the $2 billion will “help make that road smoother” and shows that the mayor understands how to manage the city’s budget for the long term.

The Republican minority leader in the City Council, James Oddo, said that while he is not opposed to the fund, the mayor did not say enough to show that he was going to be aggressive in tackling the underlying problem of increasing health care costs.

“This is like making an appointment 15 years out for a coronary bypass at Mount Sinai, but then never changing your diet,” he said. “Just taking $2 billion and putting it to the side without aggressively attacking the cause of this fiscal crunch doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

The head of the United Federation for Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said that while the fund is a prudent idea, the city has other needs. In a statement, Ms. Weingarten, chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee, dismissed the notion that pension costs are “out of control.”

The statement is another sign that a discussion over pension and health care changes could lead to a battle between the mayor and the city’s labor unions, which are trying to protect their members’ benefits.

Under Mr. Bloomberg’s proposed budget, a document that is sure to be modified several times during negotiations with the City Council, the mayor will reserve $3.5 billion for long-term costs – $1 billion in capital expenses that the city will pay for on its own without loans, $2 billion for the health care fund, and $500 million to pay off debt.

The proposed budget also seeks $100 million more in aid from the federal government and $250 million in help from the state. Mr. Bloomberg provided a laundry list of ways they can help, including state approval of a 50-cent tax hike for cigarettes purchased in the city.

During his PowerPoint presentation, Mr. Bloomberg used charts and graphs to show the skyrocketing pension and fringe benefit costs.

The city’s pension obligations are estimated at $5.3 billion for fiscal year 2007, which starts in July, compared with $1.3 billion five years ago. Pension and health care costs now make up more than 60% of all of the money the city pays in compensation for the municipal workforce. All told, the city budget is expected to weigh in at about $55.5 billion for this fiscal year.

The City Council said the mayor slashed $300 million in social service programs – a standard move that generally leads to months of negotiations until the mayor puts the money back in the budget.

The new speaker of the council, Christine Quinn, said she wants to change the annual back-and-forth “to stop the music, to stop the dance.”

She said the council would attempt to exercise more oversight power when it comes to the budget. She commended some of the mayor’s ideas, including the health care fund, but said the council would review it all more thoroughly in the coming weeks.

The city is required by law to pass a balanced budget by July 1.