By ANDREW J. BERNSTEIN, The Saratogian
Seeks to avoid 40 percent property tax hike through new revenue sources
SARATOGA SPRINGS — As the official charged with plugging a $1.3 million hole in the city’s budget, Commissioner of Finance Kenneth Ivins has his work cut out for him.
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, which ran until
11:30 p.m., the council also settled an Article 78 lawsuit with a former member of the Department of Public Works.
At the meeting’s midpoint, Ivins offered his suggestions for the best way to keep the city’s budget balanced, while also building a new public safety facility.
Pushing ahead to build the facility without finding new revenue could lead to a hike in property taxes as high as 40 percent, Ivins said.
Central to his plan is to establish paid parking in both existing and to-be-built parking structures, including a High Rock parking garage and an expanded lot on Woodlawn Avenue. Under his suggestion, on-street parking would remain free, but would turn over more often, hopefully helping to drive traffic in downtown businesses.
His hope is to increase sales tax revenue while also finding a new revenue source for the city.
Prior to presenting his thoughts on paid parking, Ivins laid out several cost-cutting methods, showing pros and cons to each.
As employee-related expenses account for 80 percent of the city’s expenditures each year, Ivins said "cutting the fat" could start with the work force. He said the city could try methods such as offering early retirements, imposing mandatory days off without pay for workers, or layoffs — but then gave reasons for why each one was only a partial solution.
Early retirement could temporarily reduce the size of the work force and new employees would start on lower steps, but giving incentives for employees to take an early retirement would also cost money, and the city would be required to continue health care payments for the former employees and new hires.
Imposing mandatory time off from work without pay could result in some savings, but also could result in increased overtime costs in public works, the fire department and the police department, and could result in an impact on services in other departments.
Layoffs could similarly result in savings, but would come with decreased services and could also come with overtime costs.
Ivins said he wanted to begin a public discussion to move the city toward reaching a decision on the best way to balance the budget and to build needed infrastructure.
Commissioner of Public Safety Ron Kim said he thought some of Ivins’ suggestions were good, while he didn’t like others.
"It’s still not clear to me if we’re going to go forward in the short term, or if we’re going to continue to let these proposals sit out there," Kim said. "I didn’t get a firm conclusion or recommendation from the proposal, other than ‘here are my thoughts and ideas.’ We do have a budget problem, and we’re going to be looking for solutions on both the revenue and expense side."
Kim said he felt the city would have a hard time finding places to make additional cuts and should instead focus on bringing in new revenue.
"He has some other suggestions that are certainly worth exploring, but we have to build a parking garage to support our City Center. I think that conclusion is inescapable," Kim said.
Commissioner of Public Safety Skip Scirocco said he had not yet had time to fully digest the proposal.
"There were some good ideas, but there was a lot of information. I need to sit down and look at it again before I can develop any opinion," he said.
In other business:
ä Both Kim and Ivins said some resolution is needed on whether the city will follow Wick’s Law or create a project labor agreement in the development of the High Rock parking lots. Kim said that at a coming meeting he will bring a motion to hire a law firm to conduct a study to determine the feasibility of a project labor agreement.
ä At the end of Tuesday’s meeting, the council also made two decisions in executive session; settling a lawsuit against the city brought by a former DPW employee for $11,400, and hiring an engineer to evaluate the grandstand at the East Side Recreation Field for a cost of up to $2,400.
The grand stand has been closed since last summer, and the city and the school district now need to decide whether to repair or replace the structure.
RSS Feeds