Public safety. Quality of life. And another year of the trash fee. Those are some of the key facets of Troy Mayor Carmella Mantello’s first budget proposal. The Republican presented the plan to the GOP-controlled city council this week. But the presentation came as the city remains without a fulltime comptroller. Democratic Council President Sue Steele was quick to blast the proposal, saying it lacks transparency. WAMC spoke with Mantello after the meeting.
We're going to go line by line. We'll stay and we would have stayed longer this evening If they wanted to go through more revenues, we would have kept BST here. I mean, this is very open, and I have to tell you, that is very insulting, because I really pride ourselves on getting back to people, being responsive, being open, and being transparent. And I think it's very misleading, because we filed it on time. And if the Council President or anyone had questions over the weekend I was around, they could have called me. Nobody called me. Nobody reached out. The majority. A couple members did say, you know, hey, we want to meet with you this week. They did have a couple of questions. I found out about the minority’s questions through you, through the press. That's not the way to work. And don't get me wrong, I was on the opposing side, but you pick and choose your battles and to actually pick apart the budget before we even gave the overview tonight was just not responsible. So, it's disappointing. It's misleading. The people of Troy have seen, over the last nine months, a different administration. We're doing more with less. We are very open. And like I said, I would have stayed all night tonight. I've had some long finance meetings and you know; Andy would sit in that chair and we'd go through it. They could have asked any revenue question. They didn't even go in the front of the book, if you look at licenses, dog licenses, and how many, how much revenue have you gotten in to date? It's lined out in here. So, saying that you know, to just throw a comment out there, just was not responsible. It really is misleading, folks. And you can throw spaghetti on the wall, see if it sticks and it's not sticking. The people have Troy know better.
And she had kind of pointed out that there was a $1 million gap for county 911, services. Is there actually a gap in that?
There is not. We'll hit that when we come to police and fire. But I thought they would have asked it tonight. And that's another thing, why go to the press, make a huge issue out of it and not be public about it? I was going to address it. They didn't bring it up. But saying that, the contract with the county dispatch ends December 31 of this year. We didn't want to put a million dollars in that category knowing that we're going into negotiations within the next week, because that one million will go to $1.52 mil. It basically says we're willing to pay a million right off Jump Street. We're not. And I guess what blows me away, the minority on the council, and when I say the previous minority and majority, the Democrats were constantly saying, including the county legislators now from Troy, who were council members, like council member Gary Galuski, now County Legislature, they were constantly blasting the monies that we were paying for the county dispatch. So, for the council minority this year, including the council president, who also, if you go back to the records, stated that we're paying too much for 911, we're the only municipality paying, and it escalated from a half million dollars over the years to now $1,020,000. It's a lot of money. And so, what we want to do is enter those negotiations and be able to negotiate, but not say, ‘Okay, we're going to start off with a million,’ saying that we do have monies in contingency. There's about $1.5 million. If we have to access those, obviously we will, but we want to see what the options are out there, and we want to sit with the county executive, because I think the relationship with the City of Troy is different than when this was first executed 10 years ago.
And how is the search for a comptroller going? I know we all talked about it tonight, and it seems like it's kind of a nightmare situation to not have a comptroller. So, how's that, going forward?
Well, remember, it's not going to get fixed overnight. So, if anyone thinks like I hire a comptroller tomorrow or next week, the person is going to have to really get to know our system and get this new system implemented within the next year and a half. So, whoever it is, and what we've learned through interviews with potential candidates, other comptrollers and other municipalities, when you say KVS, their eyes pop out of their head. It's a 1980s program. It's antiquated. It's a real problem. And we the council, appropriated 200k to get that rolling. Two years ago, the prior they decided to put it off. So, now we're going to fix it. We're going to get it on track. Saying that though, the comptroller search is going well. We have a couple candidates, one retiree. Two are comptrollers in other municipalities now, but I will tell you their accounting systems are more up to date. Even if they're 2000, that's 20 years better than what we have. So, you know, think about it, the prior was working off an Excel sheet, and then he would do the entry. So, it was all manual, and you heard how complicated is. And if you mess up one entry, it has an impact on a dozen other entries, and that's where we are. So even if we found a comptroller, the comptroller would have a learning curve, etc. But we are working feverishly to get one on board because we're going to fix it. We're going to have a deputy in there. We're not going to have a one man or one woman show, which I have learned, and I didn't know this on the council side, I didn't know it back in January, but now that I see how the sausage is made, I've seen that person did all the work, and everybody chipped in, and it was a good team effort, but they didn't know what they were chipping into. So, for them to see us here late at night and actually learn what they were doing and how it fit into that puzzle was, I think, very eye opening to them also. So, I cannot say enough about the people, the retirees. We have retirees who heard that we needed help, and they came in. We had like three-part timers that came in a few hours a night to help us get this done. So, we have a great budget in front of us. It does more with less. If you notice, it's not earth shattering. A lot hasn't changed. We've trimmed where we know that the department head, the supervisor, hasn't spent that money just putting in year to year. So, we've trimmed where we've could. But at the same time, it's also balanced in terms of prior trends, etc. So, we didn't go off the rail, we didn't call like someone said, a reassessment. You can't do that when you don't have a comptroller and something like that, to the people of Troy, somebody said it all evens out. Says out a third goes down, a third go up, and a third stay the same. It is going to have an impact on people. I'd like to see more of a phased in approach, but saying that we, right now, are presenting a very conservative budget at the same time showing the people of Troy that we can increase their services while keeping that conservative level and absorbing pension, health care. You saw everything has gone up. Our debt service has gone up $1.1 million from prior years, from bonding, etc., but we've absorbed that kept very minimal tax increase, the garbage rate. Sure would. I would have loved to start phasing that out this year, but I know it's not prudent, but to keep it not raising is a huge win, because every year it's gone up like $20-30, bucks gradually. So, we had to stop that hemorrhaging, and this shows that also.
And this week was the state deadline for inventorying lead lines. How's that going? Last I checked in I think it was maybe somewhere like just over 55 percent?
We constantly we have sent a mail around. We are on social media. We do plan to go door to door. Is that going to jump it up hugely? No, but we're going to continue even beyond that deadline. We're one of the leading communities when it comes to the inventory, when it comes to lead pipe replacement, and we're just going to keep on that path. You should know we're still replacing lead pipes until the ground freezes, which we're hoping that mother nature kind of makes a comeback over the next month.
What percent is the city at now?
High 50’s. Seamus, aren't we hovering about 57% with the inventory?
Deputy Mayor Seamus Donnelly: Yes.
We'll get you a better number. Could even be close to 60. Yeah, so, but we continue. We haven't stopped. And we're just going to keep. Plugging out, plugging away and grinding, and we are going to be very aggressive going after that new pot of money that just came out. So, we've talked to CDM, and they're our consultant, who have been on board for years, who were successful in getting that grant from Senator Schumer.
First-term Troy Mayor Carmella Mantello.
