The race for mayor of Glens Falls is heating up, with a city council member challenging the mayor — a fellow Democrat. It comes amid disagreement over the city’s budget process.
Mayor Bill Collins was elected to lead the Warren County city in 2021. Before that, he served two four-year terms on the common council, and had worked for the New York State Special Olympics.
The Glens Falls native says he’s excited to build on the city’s momentum.
“Glens Falls is in the midst of one of the great economic expansions in our recent memory. Millions of new investments into our downtown. Hundreds of new residential units. A vibrant and growing restaurant scene. Professional hockey is here, now back from the 1980s, probably more popular than ever before. We have great schools and excellent healthcare, a walkable community with a thriving arts and culture scene. My goal is to keep this momentum going and expand on it over the next four years,” said Collins.
In 2016, Glens Falls received a $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant from the state. Last year, officials broke ground on the construction of a $5 million, DRI-funded, Event and Marketplace building meant to support one of the city’s more neglected corridors.
The city also received $12 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds.
Collins’ campaign boasts the first zero-percent tax increase in more than two decades in 2025’s budget. The mayor has been criticized for balance gaps between expected revenues and expenditures, but he says:
“The thing is that we run such a tight ship that we’ve come in under budget every year for the last three years that I’ve been in office. So, we assign some fund balance every year during the budgeting process between the budgeted revenues and the budgeted expenses, but we’ve never had to use a penny of that. Instead, we’ve always come in more under budget. So, that is, we need to keep it affordable, we need to keep as much burden off the taxpayers as possible. Those are things that are within my and our control,” said Collins.
Third Ward Councilwoman Diana Palmer is calling for more transparency in the city’s budgeting process — and wants to oversee it.
“Every year we’re going into the budget with a deficit and then that deficit has grown every year the mayor has been in office. So, he’s presenting us with budgets where we plan to spend more than we plan to bring in at a growing rate. He’s argued that, well, it’s ok because we still have a good fund balance so it’s all working out. I don’t know how he cannot—understand that we’ve had $12 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for the last few years. So, every time we’ve had expenses that the general fund would’ve had to pay for like new trucks, new technology, infrastructure repairs, we’ve had an extra pot of money to go to, therefore the fund balance didn’t get depleted even though we’re spending more than we’re bringing in,” said Palmer.
As she runs for mayor, Palmer also wants to save money she says is lost through the city’s grant applications and consultant fees, adding she’d like to see a more conservative budgeting process.
“The mayor has also, at times, tried to steer us in directions that are, I think, outside our core responsibilities. For example, he wanted to buy a large private property in the core of our downtown that went for sale, the TD Bank building. He’s also wanted to spend money on event coordination that, currently, those events are mostly chaired and put on by volunteers in our community, from the business community. So, those are things that I don’t think we should be spending government money on buying private property or on taking over events that are already being run by volunteers,” said Palmer.
Both candidates say the race won’t impede their ability to work together before June 24th’s Democratic primary.
No Republicans have joined the race so far.
