The mayor of Albany has unveiled her 2017 budget proposal.
Mayor Kathy Sheehan is calling it a "responsible budget” that builds a “bridge to fiscal sustainability." The $176 million spending plan boasts a 2 percent decrease in spending from last year, which the mayor says is the largest annual spending decrease in more than 15 years. The proposal will lower taxes but the city's ongoing property revaluation could offset any savings.
The budget features no new fees or fines; however, the unpopular "trash fee" remains.
In line with tradition, the budget also includes a $12.5 million request for state funding. Sheehan would like state aid to be in the form of permanent funding, not so-called "spin-up" money offered as payments in lieu of taxes for exempt state properties, which make up the majority of property in the city. And what if it fails to materialize? "I'm not gonna be an alarmist at this point in time. I feel very confident that we have demonstrated to the state that we have a unique case here, and that we have been very good stewards of the money that we have received in the form of state aid, and that the amount of state aid that we receive, even if you look at our 19A money, is still significantly below similarly situated cities. So we're asking for some parity, some equity and some alignment with respect to the funding that we receive."
Other highlights include: modernization of the city’s financial municipal management software; cutting worker's comp expenses in half; support for the Albany Police Department’s body camera program, currently in the testing phase, and "language access," which Sheehan says will make the city "more responsive to Albany’s growing diverse population."
Albany Common Council President Carolyn McLaughlin says the budget proposal may sound good, but raises questions. "You can't just do fluff things, things that are gonna, you know, and make people think that life is gonna be rosy in the city of Albany. The easy thing of, you know, I like the idea of having this dual language of some of the materials in the city, but ultimately how does that really affect how people are living in the city? I'm anxious to read the full document. What really troubles me, and I have to get an understanding of it, how are you gonna predict that there won't be worker's comp cases and you can reduce that expense by $2 million off the top. I don't understand that, so I'm anxious to read about that, and that's a big part of the over $3 million dollar reduction in the budget."
Sheehan, a first-term Democrat, insists her administration remains committed to sound fiscal management. "Over the next two months, the council will take this budget under consideration. They will hold meetings of the finance committee with each of the department heads to review the budgets of each of our departments, and we will continue to provide information as requested from the council, in order to make sure that there's an understanding of this budget. I haven't really doven in to the capital budget, but I will say that we were able to deliver a capital budget, it is fairly close, actually very close, to what we projected that it would be last year, but that's another area where we know that we will spend time discussing some of those capital projects."
