After weeks of debates, calculations and politicking, the City Council of Saratoga Springs agreed in a split vote to make mid-year budget cuts and reach into its fund balance to stave off economic crisis on Tuesday, July 7.
The city moved to close a $2.8 million revenue shortfall with roughly $1.3 million in budget cuts and $1.5 million from its coffers. The crisis is largely the result of a slumping sales and property tax take combined with the state government’s decision to withhold nearly $1.9 million in video lottery terminal aida decision that was made after the city passed its own budget.
Commissioner of Finance Ken Ivins, whose office drafted the amendments, said that the cuts were intended to avoid layoffs and maintain essential functions.
I tried my best to come up with a compromise that would least impact the services to the residents while trying to make the thing balance,` he said. `It’s a compromise, like anything else.`
Originally, Ivins had sought $2 million in cuts, but talks with other city leaders pared that number down.
Some positions will be removed, reduced or left unfilled. The only full time job lost will be an executive assistant Public Safety office. Also in the city’s biggest department, two dispatcher positions will be cut and police compensational time and fire overtime and compensational time will be curtailed.
In other departments, a number of primarily part-time office positions will see trimmed hours or elimination altogether.
In addition to a number of big-ticket items like Department of Public Works equipment and outside financial services, there are many small reductions such holding off on the purchase of sports supplies for the Recreation Department or new uniforms for police officers.
A line-by-line summary of the budget amendments can be found on the city’s Web site, www.saratoga-springs.org.
To some members of the City Council, these cuts didn’t amount to enough.
`Many of the cuts I see on here are nothing but deferrals,` said Commissioner of Accounts John Franck. `This is going to increase peoples’ taxes by double digits, not just next year, but for many years.`
Franck was joined in dissention by Mayor Scott Johnson, who said that fiscal mismanagement, especially in the Public Safety Department, is more to blame than any economic downturn. He argued there have been increases in that department’s budget while other offices have contracted.
`If every other department in the city operated in that fashion, we would have been out of business a long time ago,` said Johnson. `I cannot support this budget without further reductions, particularly coming from Public Safety.`
Commissioner of Public Safety Ron Kim countered that the services provided by his department are those that city residents absolutely cannot afford to forego. He said additional revenue streams should be examined, and proposed amending the budget cuts with a capital expenditure moratorium. The motion was not met with a second.
`It’s incredible to me that we are contemplating this without looking at a capital budget moratorium,` said Kim. `There are projects out there, most notably the rec center, that are going to have to be staffed, heated and maintained.`
Commissioner of Public Works Anthony `Skip` Scirocco placed the blame for the budget crisis and the city’s lengthy response on the city’s council form of government.
`There’s a lot of waste in the way we do government here. It’s everybody pitted against everybody else, and it doesn’t bode well for the taxpayers of the city,` he said
Perhaps the only thing the council members could agree unanimously on is that even with Tuesday’s budget amendments, the city will be facing the start of a particularly daunting budget cycle in just a few short months.
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