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Troy 2016 Budget Impasse

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The Troy city council is at an impasse over the 2016 budget, which calls for a 9.3 percent tax hike. The deadline is getting closer by the day.

Facing a December 1 deadline, the Troy City Council failed by a single vote to pass a tax cap override Wednesday night. Officials had hoped to have a budget in place by now: fears are the override failure will lead to layoffs and cuts in basic city services.

Outgoing Mayor Lou Rosamilia agrees with published reports suggesting services will be affected, but says he intends to explore every other option.   "And I'll be doing that in conjunction with working with the council."

According to the Times Union, administration officials said snow plowing would be reduced, the city pools would not open, and garbage pickup would be delayed to once every two weeks. It is estimated that about 30 employees would need to be laid off to meet the proposed $68.6 million budget for 2016.

Republican Carmella Mantello is newly-elected elected leader of the City Council:  "It's up to the mayor-elect and the council-elect to work together to fix this situation. It is a situation that needs immediate attention. I offered a plan to save the city of Troy a year ago, actually, $1.3 million. The council and the mayor at that time, unfortunately did not act upon my recommendations or the state comptroller's recommendations, so here we are today, looking at an even more deficit

Mayor-elect Patrick Madden was endorsed by fellow Democrat New York State comptroller Tom Dinapoli, with whom he promised he'd work closely. Madden said the budget would be his priority, but he has not returned calls for comment regarding the current dilemma.

Meantime, Mayor Rosamilia says he is taking decisive action:  "And what I'll be doing in the future, I'll be calling another special council meeting so that we hope that we can work together, get the rate down to a point where everyone's comfortable with the rate even though it may not be able to exceed the cap but lower than the current rate. And hopefully we'll get this local law passed and move the city forward."

Mantello is looking ahead to the start of her new term:  "When I officially get sworn in on January 1st, I plan to work with the mayor. We right now are working with the transition team and I've been meeting with Mayor-elect Madden, but January first we're ready to roll up our sleeves and start moving Troy forward. We're going to do everything humanly possible to ensure that the taxpayers are not seeing all the pain. Certainly, taxes cannot be raised to double-digit increases. The taxpayers have seen enough and we are losing the people here in our city, who are moving out."

The city must now figure how to shave off roughly $1.5 million before December 1. Dates of any additional meetings, if they have been set, have yet to be made public.

Dave Lucas is WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief. Born and raised in Albany, he’s been involved in nearly every aspect of local radio since 1981. Before joining WAMC, Dave was a reporter and anchor at WGY in Schenectady. Prior to that he hosted talk shows on WYJB and WROW, including the 1999 series of overnight radio broadcasts tracking the JonBenet Ramsey murder case with a cast of callers and characters from all over the world via the internet. In 2012, Dave received a Communicator Award of Distinction for his WAMC news story "Fail: The NYS Flood Panel," which explores whether the damage from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee could have been prevented or at least curbed. Dave began his radio career as a “morning personality” at WABY in Albany.
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