The Saratoga Springs City Council on Tuesday opted not to release $50,000 in funding that had already been allocated for a process known as participatory budgeting.
Nine projects had been proposed by city residents and local nonprofits to be funded through money already set aside in Saratoga Springs’ budget.
Of those nine, Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi, a Democrat, presented only four to be funded – two projects at Divison Street Elementary, including a new kiln, a concert series for preschoolers at Caffe Lena, and an expansion to Pitney Meadow’s exploration garden.
Caffe Lena’s Executive Director made a final plea to city councilors ahead of the vote.
“It’s early childhood enrichment, social connection and community building all rolled into one low-cost, high-impact program. It draws Saratogains from every walk of life. Families who live here year-round who work in our restaurants, hotels, shops, schools, healthcare, who pay taxes and who are trying to build a good life in a city that is often felt by locals to be organized around visitors rather than residents,” said Craig.
Leading up to Tuesday’s vote, Republican Mayor John Safford and Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll, a Democrat elected with GOP backing, said they were likely to vote against releasing the funding. The council has its first effective Republican majority in more than a decade after Republican Chuck Marshall won a January special election for the open Public Works Commissioner seat.
Coll explained his vote at the meeting.
“I believe the projects in participatory budgeting are all virtuous, without question, the issue we have as a city is we have a budget deficit of $3 million which is around 5% of our overall budget. We are $3 million in the red, next year we’re projecting to be around $2 million in the red and we need to turn that around. To me, it’s an easy decision – if we were in the black it would be a much different analysis. But, because we are in the red and we are involved in deficit spending we cannot afford these, what I would call wants versus needs,” said Coll.
The votes to release funds for each of the four proposed projects failed, 2-2, with outgoing Republican Public Works Commissioner Chuck Marshall abstaining.
Following the meeting, Sanghvi, who introduced participatory budgeting to the city in 2022, said she was disappointed but not surprised by the outcome.
“Our city’s finances are stable. We’ve passed balanced budgets, this money was already in the budget. All they had to do was release it and they couldn’t even do that. Truly, truly heartless. And I feel sorry for all the kids who were excited to get a new kiln and now they won’t be even though people voted for it, they submitted the projects, they were vetted, the people voted and Mayor Safford and Tim Coll and Chuck essentially told them their votes didn’t matter,” said Sanghvi.
Participatory budgeting allocates roughly .07% of the city’s overall $63 budget for citizen-proposed projects.
Safford and Coll voted against participatory budgeting last year as well. Safford explains until the city’s finances are in a better spot, he won’t support this kind of spending.
“This year, in order to fund the low-barrier shelter and the other things we’ve committed to do for helping people, we’re going to go almost $2 million [in the red] this year. And we just felt, and this is nothing new, that this is not a good way of using taxpayers’ money. We asked [Sanghvi] not to bring it, she brought it, she made it a big emotional issue tonight. And, you know, we’re just trying to be vey careful how we handle taxpayer’s money,” said Safford.
JoAnne Kiernan currently serves as Safford’s deputy mayor but was elected to fill Sangvhi’s finance commissioner role in the new year as she leaves to represent the city on the Saratoga County Board of Supervisors. Kiernan, an independent who ran with Republican support, tells WAMC she won’t commit to future rounds of participatory budgeting.
