Troy Mayor Carmella Mantello’s first budget was passed by the Republican-led council Monday night over protests by Democrats about the process.
The budget was approved on a 4-3 vote.
Mantello, a Republican, says the more than $117 million budget had a “modest” tax increase of 1.89 percent. It also resulted in no increases to the garbage fee. The now $254 per unit fee was meant to be a temporary fee of $160 when introduced in 2017, but became semi-permanent.
The first-term mayor pledged to cut it while campaigning but now says she’s studying how to remove it. She says the fee accounts for more than $3 million in revenue and needs to be phased out rather than scrapped.
“2025 is going to be a new year, and once again, we're thinking differently when it comes to how we deliver services to the people of Troy,” Mantello said.
While the Republican majority remained mostly silent during the budget negotiation process, the council’s Democratic minority expressed concerns over the lack of finance reports. In July, the city’s comptroller resigned under mounting pressure to deliver the reports while working with incomplete information for 2023 and an archaic accounting system. The city is still working to fill the position and has hired outside accounting firm BST Co. to close its 2023 books and complete reports for 2024.
In a statement to WAMC in November, Mantello said a six-month finance report was provided to the council in October when the budget was presented.
Councilors say documentation of city finances was provided; however, it was largely incomplete and the administration was unable to answer questions.
Council President Sue Steele says without the quarterly reports, passage of the budget is a disservice to residents. She adds she “has no confidence in the document,” calling it an “unrealistic spending plan.” Steele reiterated her concerns Monday night that the contingency fund remains underfunded as union negotiations begin.
“I am very concerned about the inadequacy of the contingency fund. We're told that the 911, expenses for services will be coming out of the contingency fund,” Steele said. “We're also told there are a number of areas of the budget that were not provided for, including staffing for the Knick[erbocker] pool. I mean, I can go on and on and on, areas that would were not provided for and would presumably come out of the contingency fund. So that's a concern to me. I'm also concerned about the way the credits, the energy tax, the energy credits from National Grid. I don't think they've been properly accounted for in the budget, and I don't believe our answers were correct on that.”
Steele says the budget also fails to account for growing costs for union labor contracts. Mantello says she is not concerned.
“If you look back at the eight prior budgets where we were under the state comptroller's review. The State Comptroller basically said to the council, which I was on, that while the CBA, the collective bargaining agreements, are not in the proposed budget, the council should be aware of that, but saying that the prior administration did the same thing, did not account for those collective bargaining,” Mantello said. “However, there are monies, and I must tell you, and that was the review by the State Comptroller so the. Council president was a part of that, made no bones in the past about it.”
Mantello says her administration is continuing to meet with union negotiators.
Throughout the budget hearing process, the administration made amendments to correct items misstated on the proposed budget, according to city treasurer Gabrielle Mahoney, who has also taken on some of the responsibility of the comptroller as the city continues its search.
“There were some entries that were made after the printed budget that, you know we had our consultants in that were doing some fixes and journal entries,” Mahoney said. “So those numbers had to be, they were misstated in the budget, and they were, they have to be amended to the appropriate actual receipts for 2023.”
Steele has contended that the mayor is banking on vacancies to fill gaps in the budget, but Mantello says instead, the city is rethinking structure.
“Many of the positions in DPU require a CDL. We know it's very tough right now, finding CDL drivers, retaining them,” Mantello said, “So we're thinking differently in terms of the classification of those vacancies and also recruitment and retention.”
