With City Councilors preparing to scrutinize Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy's budget proposal, both sides hope there won't be a repeat of last year's standoff.
McCarthy recently released his $116 million dollar spending plan via email, quietly sidestepping the traditional budget presentation at city hall. The proposal comes in about $7 million dollars higher than last year, with a modest rise in refuse and trash charges.
"Yeah, we've had, like, seven years where we cut the rate, so it's actually going up about 2% so it's in the tax cap criteria set by the state. For a typical median house, it'll be a $19 a year increase," McCarthy said.
Councilor Carmel Patrick believes that could have been avoided. "If we had been more prudent in actually meeting the tax, the increase that the mayor wanted to have last year on the trash fees, then we probably wouldn't have to be doing the increase this year to the same extent," said Patrick.
Those refuse and trash charges nearly derailed the entire budget process last year, putting the city dangerously close to missing its budget deadline altogether when the mayor and council repeatedly clashed over the spending proposal, much to McCarthy's chagrin.
"We have a very open policy for trash collection, basically, anything that's put out to the curb we pick up," said McCarthy. "The council has not chosen to modify what's in the code, and it hinders my ability to build efficiencies into that and encourage people to be more conscious of what they're putting out, promote recycling and sustainability."
McCarthy, a fourth-term Democrat, says there's about $3 million dollars in what he calls "residual money" leftover from other programs. There's also increased revenue from cannabis shops and Rivers Casino, but not enough to offset the need for the tax hike.
Patrick is disappointed that a charter change proposed by McCarthy failed to gain traction. "Yeah, the mayor had presented a proposal that would have had a slight charter change, where, if we didn't pass the budget by November 1st, which, of course, legislatively, we're supposed to be passing the budget by November 1. If we didn't, then the budget would have gone through as the mayor's presented budget. The budget that the mayor gave to us this week would have become automatically the budget starting January 1. I actually was in favor of that. I thought it was a good suggestion. I thought that it would hold us accountable to making sure that we passed the budget by November 1st, but it did not get approved by the majority of folks on that committee. So it never came to a vote," said Patrick.
McCarthy says he's looking forward to working with the council and adopting "a timely and balanced budget."
Patrick says she's on the same page. "I was actually pleased that we were presented with a balanced budget. I was anticipating that we were going to see a deficit budget this year, given the reduction in our federal funding from the ARPA funds that we've been able to use for the last couple of years. So I'm hoping that, because the balance is a balanced budget, that there won't be the same kind of strife that there was last year in our budget negotiations. I also feel that as a city council, we have improved our own communication among each other, and so I'm hoping that we'll have a smoother sailing this year than we did last year," Patrick said.
Seven planned budget hearings are scheduled to kick off Wednesday.
