The 2024 Saratoga Springs budget was approved last week, but election-season tensions continued among outgoing city councilors.
The budget was passed by the Saratoga Springs city council last week with three yes votes, one abstention, and one no.
The $61 million budget provides funding for the city’s temporary 24/7, low-barrier homeless shelter as well as funds set aside to try and ensure a successful opening of the Spa City’s third fire station on the east side.
Speaking with WAMC, Democratic Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi explained the philosophy behind the plan.
“I’m very conservative in my approach. And, you know, when you add new services and you’re not taking additional monies from the public, what you’re doing is you’re cutting back other services. And I think the public does not want that. We are a growing city; the public wants more services. And, honestly, the fact that we did not increase taxes – our property taxes – for 10 years almost ensured that our city was almost not in a good place as compared to our sales tax,” explained Sanghvi.
Sanghvi said that the increased property taxes, around a $40 annual increase for a home assessed at $200,000, will go far in paying for necessary services.
“So, these services don’t come for free. We are putting aside money for this and that’s basically how we end up trying to pay for these services,” said Sanghvi.
The capital budget totals $6.6 million with one third going toward providing a ladder truck to the new fire station on Henning Road and $1.2 million toward maintaining the Loughberry Lake Dam.
Democratic Mayor Ron Kim, who lost his bid for reelection in November, abstained from the vote, citing concerns over salary upgrades for a handful of city employees.
“Our labor attorney said it’s clearly illegal for us to do that in a budget. It’s a collective bargaining issue that the mayor should be involved in. So, part of my abstention was trying to protect the authority of the mayor’s office not just for my term, which is quickly going to be done, but for the next mayor,” explained Kim.
For her part, Commissioner Sangvhi disagrees.
“We checked with HR to see if we can make these upgrades based on our finance policy and procedure manual, and HR said that was completely fine,” said Sanghvi.
Republican Mayor-elect John Safford has been meeting with city officials before taking office in January and says the budgeting process has not been as rigorous as in the past.
“The fire station is a huge concern. If you follow it, and rightfully so, there should be four people on the truck. But, the original planning financially for it was three. And so, there is this gap that’s a concern, I’m sure Commissioner Montagnino must have mentioned that, but there is a gap that we’re very concerned about. And, of course, our insurance premium has doubled,” said Safford.
The new fire station has been hotly debated for years. As recently as October Kim and Democratic Commissioner of Public Safety Jim Montagnino butted heads in a budget meeting when it became clear that adequate funds had not been set aside to staff the new station with four full-time firefighters.
Montagnino was the sole “no” vote.
“If we’ve got two stations now and three in the near future, that’s a 50% increase in rough numbers, right, of the size of the department and the current budget doesn’t account for that. In fact, if you look at just the roughest numbers last year public safety was 61% of the budget, this year its 59% of the budget,” explained Montagnino.
Mayor Kim placed blame for the financial shortcomings at the feet of Montagnino, accusing him of financial malfeasance for failing to account for an increase in costs in his own department.
Sanghvi emphasized that the Department of Public Safety’s budget has continued to increase during her term.
“Public Safety, in fact, saw a $2 million increase to their budget. And, it’s not just a $2 million increase to their budget in this year, but if you look at their budget more holistically in 2022 their budget was only about $29 million. So, it’s really a $7 million increase over the last two years,” said Sanghvi.
