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Kingston Mayor Steve Noble unveils $50 million budget proposal

Kingston Mayor Steve Noble, proposed 2021 budget address, October 16, 2020
Courtesy of the Office of Kingston Mayor Steve Noble/Screenshot by WAMC, Allison Dunne
Kingston Mayor Steve Noble

Kingston Mayor Steve Noble has outlined his budget proposal for 2023. The Democrat delivered the plan to the city council on Monday. The $50 million budget is up from last year’s $46 million proposal, but Noble says even with expenses up, tax rates are actually slightly lower than last year, continuing a seven-year decline. Noble says the Ulster County city of roughly 25,000 people is benefiting from higher sales tax receipts even as it braces for economic uncertainty during a time of high inflation. Noble spoke with WAMC’s Ian Pickus:

I think for us here in the City of Kingston, we wanted to develop a structurally sound budget that was fiscally constrained, but also then invested in all the right places. And so, while our expenses are up, like households and communities are facing across the state, we were able to, you know, from our perspective, you know, invest though in all of the right places. And that has allowed us to lower tax rates for the seventh year in a row, lower the tax levy slightly, and also then invest in new programs and sustainability and mental health, in being able to make sure that we supported all of our infrastructure work that's happening in the city. And so, we feel like this is a good well-rounded budget, while also making sure that it's we're cautiously optimistic that, you know, we will have, you know, lower inflation and lower costs. But we prepared for the worst with this budget, and made sure that we gave ourselves some flexibility as we kind of go through 2023, which we'll probably be still is kind of an unknown year on how it's all going to shape up.

Last year, your proposal was for, if I remember correctly, around $46 million, or so. Is that right? Where does this year's total fall?

Yeah, so our total budget this year is just over 50 million. So, we're $50,094,707. And so, you'll see there that our expenses did increase in a couple of key categories, you know, everything from personnel expenses to, you know, expenses in a lot of contractual areas that really are kind of tied to inflation, like fuel costs and materials, supplies and goods. But we also saw increases in sales tax and mortgage tax revenues, which really then help to offset, you know, those increased costs. And that's why we were able to, you know, come in with a budget that was, you know, less burdensome on our taxpayers this year compared to last.

Does the tax rate fall within the state tax cap limit?

Yes. And so, for us, our tax levy has been flat, since 2016. And which is basically a 0% tax increase. And this year, we were actually able to lower our tax levy just slightly by about $50,000. And so, for each of the years, going back to 2016, we've actually had declining tax rates here in the city. And so, that's good for our residents. They're actually paying less than taxes and getting more in services, at least here at the city level, which is the only taxes unfortunately, that we can control here in the area.

Are there any priorities that are carried within this budget that you'd like to highlight?

Yeah, I think for us, you know, we really had two main areas of excitement. One is we are launching the first outside of New York City, mobile health, mobile mental health co-response team. Which pairs one of our firefighters with a crisis counselor, and they're going to be able to respond to emergency mental health calls. Here in the City of Kingston, we just took ownership of our very first ambulance this past Friday. The only other program that we know of that has a pilot program running is in New York City. And so, we're going to be the first that we believe outside of New York City to have this co-response team, that's going to work five days a week, eight hours a day, to be able to respond to calls. And so, we really, we identified that in the budget as something that we're excited to be able to support going forward with our partners. And then the second thing is related to sustainability. We're actually investing in a proposed four building solar project, that's going to cover four of our municipal buildings with solar and with enough to be able to power a few other buildings on top of it, based on some of the size of what we can build. And, you know, being able to roll out our first composting collection program, it'll be a municipal composting collection program where we'll be setting up in year one anyway, twelve drop off locations where residents and businesses can go and bring their compost, drop it off, and then we will manage it, here as the City of Kingston, and that's the first of a three-year project, and by the end of the three years, we plan to have compost bins delivered to every resident and business that wants one, so that we can have municipal compost collection in the entire city. So, those are some of our big announcements today. Mental health sustainability and then, you know, being able to just keep, you know, moving forward as a city on some of the great work that we've been able to do over the last couple of years.

Well, you said earlier that tax receipts are up is that evidence of the, I guess, anecdotal buzz we've been hearing about Kingston becoming the new Brooklyn?

We've definitely had more people during the, kind of just before the pandemic, and then definitely, during the pandemic. We've seen a lot more people coming to Kingston, finding Kingston spending money here in Kingston and Ulster County. And so, we feel that we're kind of perfectly poised 90 miles outside of New York City, and where we are in the Hudson Valley and as a small city, I think we have a little bit of everything and it really does attract a lot of people and people are spending money here. And so, I think that that's, that's good, because it allows us to then make better investments for our residents, based on using other people's money, as when they spend money here in Ulster County. And so, that's a good thing to be at and I feel, you know, that we're at the right place at the right time, and well positioned to hopefully see that continue. But again, this budget, you know, does give some pause to what the future may look like, because I wish we all had a crystal ball about the future, but we don't. And so, we did try to slow that growth slightly in our budget because right now, it's been pretty, very, very strong for Kingston, and we just don't know what 2023 is going to look like quite yet.

We've talked about this in the past, but what kind of pressure are those dynamics putting on the housing situation in Kingston, given the state of emergency that was declared at one time?

Yeah, one of the things that we have really focused on is making sure that we're supporting the building of additional housing. We've really been in a kind of a no build situation for a decade or so, for a whole variety of different reasons. And so, we really tried to spin that, to be able to get more housing units built. Just this past week, my housing department and I announced a new 60 unit proposed building right here on Broadway next to the Ulster Performing Arts Center, UPAC, which would have, you know, market rate units, affordable housing units, ground floor commercial. That's the kind of investment that we like to see here, happening in Kingston and those types of projects have been popping up all around our city over the last couple of months, and that's, at least proposals for those types of projects. And so, we're really excited about 2023 when it comes to housing, I think we're one of the only communities in the state that has a housing office, that's this small anyway, because we're only about 25,000 people. And we feel like that has really helped us be able to leverage, you know, relationships and development opportunities, and we're doing a new zoning code. So housing was one of the topics that we talked about in the budget, because we feel like to have a vibrant city, we need to be able to have workforce housing, we need to be able to have places for people to live as jobs are being created, you know, in and around Kingston.

Have you gotten any early reviews of the budget from the city council? How receptive do you think they are to your plan?

Yes, so today actually marks day one for the common council’s process. So, the council, you know, received our budget today, they'll go through a series of meetings, all of our department heads to review the budget. I hope that they'll find the budget, you know, has stayed true to all of our previous budgets where, you know, we are, you know, fiscally, you know, confident in our budgets, and we've got a great comptroller who makes sure that, you know, we're doing everything that we can to, you know, control costs, but at the same time investing in the right areas. And I think that our key message to the you know, common counsel and all of this this year is to be able to just make sure that, you know, our budget is designed to be able to build what is needed and maintain what is built. And I think that that's one of the things that we're trying to just get it a crossed as our kind of top line, you know, budget message this year is that, you know, we want to be able to continue growing, but we also need to continue to maintain, you know, our city, to the best of our ability.

A lifelong resident of the Capital Region, Ian joined WAMC in late 2008 and became news director in 2013. He began working on Morning Edition and has produced The Capitol Connection, Congressional Corner, and several other WAMC programs. Ian can also be heard as the host of the WAMC News Podcast and on The Roundtable and various newscasts. Ian holds a BA in English and journalism and an MA in English, both from the University at Albany, where he has taught journalism since 2013.
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