Schenectady city lawmakers are back at the negotiating table after a vote to raise property taxes by 15% failed to pass at a special City Council meeting Monday night.
The vote to raise tax rates beyond the New York State property tax cap — which requires a 60% super majority to pass — failed after three of the council’s seven members refused to back a property tax hike above 13%.
“At the end of the day, that tax burden is going to fall on our renters who are already struggling,” said Councilmember Kim Wiggins, who voted against overriding the tax cap. “Food stamps have been divided in half for families. People are struggling. We got to do better.”
Schenectady lawmakers have spent the last month working to fill an approximately $15 million budget gap without overburdening residents with property taxes.
Like many municipalities across New York State, the city is facing the end of pandemic-era federal funding, inflation, negotiated salary increases and rising healthcare costs. The city will end 2026 with an empty general fund balance, and the state comptroller's office rated Schenectady as being “susceptible to fiscal stress.”
"Any tax increase that we release is going to mean a lot for people on fixed incomes," Council President Carl Williams said during the debate. "But the worry then is how do we put ourselves on a somewhat stable picture in 2027 as we're juggling five balls on a dancing ring of fire? And we're hoping that the cards fall in our favor — we are."
The no votes from the council's three holdouts — Wiggins and fellow Councilmembers John Mootooveren and Justin Chaires — surprised some members of the council, who expected to pass a budget with a 15% property tax increase that night.
“I'm shocked that that didn’t pass,” Councilmember Carmel Patrick, who voted for the 15% property tax increase, said after the vote. “I mean, what have we been doing the last few weeks? And secondly, what makes anyone around this table think that something’s going to change between tonight and another night? I mean, I kind of thought we had come to an agreement this evening.”
“I think you missed something,” Wiggins responded. “We didn’t agree on 15 [percent].”
A property tax increase of 15% would cost taxpayers about $745,500 more than a 13% increase would.
Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy originally proposed raising the property tax levy by 43%, a proposition that was unpopular with some members of the council and the public.
The City Council drastically slashed that property tax increase to 15% by supplementing their roughly $122.7 million budget proposal with nearly $6.5 million in “anticipated state aid” that city officials will have to lobby the state government for.
The council unanimously passed a non-binding resolution requesting that aid from the state Monday night, but Patrick noted that the city hasn’t, to her knowledge, discussed the aid with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office or other state officials.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Patrick said. “I mean, it’s like throwing darts at a dartboard.”
Failure to secure that state aid would likely result in “substantial layoffs and reductions in service,” according to Mayor McCarthy.
The council also cut another $1.7 million from McCarthy’s original proposal by eliminating overtime spending, vacant positions and stipends.
In order to lower the tax rate to 13%, lawmakers debated further increasing the amount of money they expect to receive from sales taxes — without increasing the sales tax rate itself. That proposal was shot down by council members concerned that actual sales tax revenue would fall short of juiced projections.
“We got into this position by overinflating, and I’m not going to overinflate revenue any longer,” said Councilmember Doreen Ditoro, who voted for the 15% property tax increase.
The council is scheduled to reconvene for another budget vote on Thursday at 5 p.m.
Chaires, who voted against the tax increase, is running for a full term in Tuesday’s election after being appointed to fill Joseph Mancini's seat on the council last winter. He’s running against his rival from the Democratic Primary, Rachael Ward, who has the backing of McCarthy and will appear on the Conservative Party line.
The Republican candidate, Sarojanie Ibrahim, dropped out in early October and endorsed Ward. Ibrahim will still appear on the ballot.
