Pressure to spend budget surplus not surprising

In sports, one skill that sets the best players apart from we mere mortals has nothing to do with how fast you can run, how hard you can throw or how good you can shoot.

Thousands of athletes have the physical skills to play baseball, football, basketball or any of the seemingly endless list of sports at which a person can make some semblance of a living, but one attribute you can expect to find among the very best is the ability to anticipate what is going to happen and be prepared for it. In baseball, for example, a good fielder is usually moving before a ball is even hit because they can anticipate by the location of the pitch and the batter’s swing where the ball will go.

If you ask a coach, they will likely tell you this ability is not something that can be truly tough; it’s more something you pick up with experience, by seeing hundreds and hundreds of pitches hit all over the field. The same holds true in many other vocations, including politics. Anybody can tell you what they would do if they were on their local city, town, village or school board, but how many can go beyond that and anticipate the fallout from that decision? It’s all about having the experience to know — or at least reasonably predict — what’s going to follow.

Many people — myself included — were surprised to hear last week that the city of Troy, which basically received the fiscal equivalent of the last rites last year in the form of audit reports both by the state Comptroller’s Office and a private company hired by the City Council, actually ended the year with a $2.3 million budget surplus. Not since Chicken Little have there been tales of gloom and doom more dramatic than what these experts feared the Collar City faced in 2016, with predictions that the city could end the year with a deficit of as much as $3.9 million and new Mayor Patrick Madden would need to insti- tute a mid-year tax increase just to keep the city from going broke.

While that outcome was certainly unexpected, I was more impressed with Madden’s reaction as we talked about the report the day before it was released publicly. As we prepared to go over the many things he felt led to what was essentially a $6 million turnaround from what was predicted in 2016, the most interesting thing I heard came right at the beginning of the interview, when the mayor explained why he wanted to take the time to make sure taxpayers understood all the ramifications. One of the biggest reasons, he said, was because he knew two questions would follow

the news of a surplus:

• Why did the city need such a large property tax increase in its 2017 budget, with the mayor initially proposing a tax hike of more than 28 percent before paring it down to 14.5 percent?

• If the city has all this extra money, why can’t officials use it to reopen the two municipal pools closed under that new budget?

I wasn’t at all surprised when Madden was proven right almost as soon as news of the surplus became public. What should be seen as a sign the city was finally on the road to financial responsibility after more than two decades of what Madden has referred to as “kicking the can down the road” is instead being seen as an opportunity to go back to business as usual and sacrifice long-term stability for short-term opportunity. The small but vocal group that want the pools reopened — despite the fact that they need at least $1 million in immediate repairs just to open this summer, not to mention larger concerns about their structural integrity — are pushing hard for that and any other extra cash the city has on hand to be put towards that before anything else.

On the other side, you have taxpayers who think that extra money should immediately be put into refunding some of the extra property tax they saw this year, even though everyone from the mayor to the state Comptroller’s Office to the auditors hired by the Republican- controlled City Council has said those taxpayers have not been paying their fair share of the cost of the services the city provides because of financial sleight of hand done solely

for the benefit of elected officials looking to protect their political futures.

As a father of three, I equate it to being a parent who sees a nice little financial windfall and is met by kids wanting some toy or gadget we couldn’t afford before. Just because we have the money doesn’t mean it’s wise to spend it is what I usually say in those all-too-infrequent moments when we do have a couple dollars left after paying the monthly bills. The kids may not understand, but the smart thing to do would be to bank the money, and that is similar to what the mayor is calling for.

Just like many of us, that money would go into a bank account — in the city’s case, its fund balance — that has far too little in it already. The city started the year with a fund balance of less than $1 million, and even with the addition of the entire budget

surplus, it would still have less than half of the $7 million recommended by the state Comptroller’s Office to keep in reserve for unexpected expenses or to maintain cash flow while it waits for its budgeted revenue to flow into the city coffers.

Also like many of us, that decision is not going over well with some of the “children,” who are used to past administrations and City Councils giving in to their demands. In the end, Madden may have to shell out some of the money to keep the peace inside City Hall (specifically the council chambers), but I would be disappointed (and even more surprised than I was by the surplus) if Madden gives in, a move that would run counter to everything he has pledged since joining the campaign for mayor nearly two years ago.

It especially would make no sense given that despite all the doubters and naysay-

ers, he has (at least so far) lived up to his pledge to use smart, accurate budgeting to right the city’s ship and keep it on a path to prosperity. Given the outcome of his first year holding the city’s purse strings, I would say he at least deserves for people to give him credit for telling them the truth — both good and bad — since taking office and stop acting like children who want what they want, want it now and have no concern with what the money would mean next year, or five years from now, or 20 years from now.

I look at it this way: How do you think the city got into the fiscal mess it’s in? I’m sure it wasn’t because they wisely put money aside to avoid hitting taxpayers up for a double- digit tax hike when there is no more of the smoke and mirrors they used to balance those budgets every year.

Quite honestly, I also

don’t think you can blame taxpayers for expecting it, either, since that’s the way things have been for at least a quarter- century. That, however, makes it even more important for Madden to hold on as firmly as possible to that surplus, because just as children have to learn the value of money, so, too, do taxpayers need to see the value of not spending every dime you have — and even some you don’t — just to keep voters happy.

All of us who have ever been a parent know you sometimes have to be the bad guy. So far, at least, Madden has been willing to do that when necessary, and he’ll have to continue if the city is going to crawl out of the deep financial hole it found itself in for the second time in the past quarter- century.