Budget showdown nearing deadline
Mantello, Madden dispute over who should fill gap caused by rejection of garbage fee
TROY, N.Y. >> As the legal deadline for approving a 2018 city budget fast approaches, city officials are still battling over who should be responsible for filling a $3 million gap left when the City Council’s General Services Com- mittee last week rejected a proposed sanitation fee included in Mayor Patrick Madden’s proposal.
The council on Monday scheduled a special meeting for 7 p.m. Tuesday to “act upon the Mayor’s proposed 2018 City Budget pursuant to Section C 47-K and N of the Troy City Charter,” according to the meeting announcement. With a Friday deadline called for in the City Charter to have a budget approved and in place, Republican council President Carmella Mantello and the Democratic mayor are locked in a multimillion- dollar showdown, each claiming the other is responsible for filling the revenue gap.
Madden included a $190 annual user fee for trash collection in his
budget proposal, leaving a gap in revenue that would require a property-tax increase to balance the package in the neighborhood of the 14.5 percent included in the current spending plan after lengthy, heated negotiations. However, the Republican majority — which will only control the council for another five weeks after voters elected a new panel with a 5-2 Democratic majority, although Mantello was elected to return as its president — has the administration caught in a no-win situation, since it also can block the necessary legislation to allow the city to override a state-mandated cap on tax hikes that limits any 2017 increase to less than 2 percent. In an email to the mayor that she shared with The Record over the holiday weekend, Mantello renewed her argument that Madden failed to follow the law in including the fee in his budget. She pointed to the City Code, which was amended in 1994 to specifically prohibits the city from charging a fee for trash collection. While the city has collected a recycling fee for many years, which Madden was proposing to expand to include all trash collection, Mantello argued that the code should have been amended before Madden included the fee in his budget.
“To suggest that the actions of the City Council General Services Committee has put the proposed 2018 budget out of balance is erroneous and misleading since the budget as presented was based upon an improper and illegal multimillion dollar garbage fee,” she wrote. “I would hope the city administration would consider all viable options regarding this matter without putting another undue burden on Troy taxpayers. That is the responsibility of the chief executive and I look forward to your proposals.”
She also was sharply critical of Madden for failing to inform her or the rest of the council that he was considering such a fee before announcing it with his budget proposal in October.
“The Mayor has had the last year to offer an amendment to the code allowing for the City to levy a garbage fee,” she said. “It is noteworthy that even though there have been several Finance and General Services Committee Meetings since the first of the year, the Mayor at no time mentioned or discussed with these committees the proposed garbage fee.
adden harshly disputed Mantello’s assertions in an statement emailed Monday afternoon, pointing out inclusion of the fee had withstood the annual scrutiny of the mayor’s proposal by the state Comptroller’s Office.
“The Council President’s statement advances a very unique and bizarre interpretation of the budget process, one that no else one ascribes to, including the State Comptroller’s Office,” Madden wrote. “Fee increases are routinely included in budget proposals in every municipality across the state, as well as in the State’s budget process.”
But Mantello again rebuffed the mayor’s argument in an emailed statement late Monday.
“If the Mayor was sincere about the garbage fee he would’ve come to the council during this past summer to ask, prior to the budget being submitted, for the code to be changed and a garbage fee to be legal,” she wrote. “He never did that and, therefore, knowingly presented a budget violating the code in terms of collecting a garbage fee. The ball is in the Mayor’s court.”
If the two sides aren’t able to resolve their differences by the end of the week, it would mark the second straight year Madden and the council couldn’t put a budget in place on time. Last year, a battle over Madden’s proposed 24.2 percent tax hike was not resolved until a 14.5- percent increase was finally approved in mid-December.
“Changing the way we do business in the city of Troy requires difficult decisions to address rising costs associated with delivering signature city services to our families and residents,” Madden said. “It is of utmost importance that the City Council move quickly to address the $3 million deficit as a result of their unwillingness to advance important legislation associated with my administration’s balanced budget proposal.”
In a memo from Deputy Comptroller Andy Piotrowski that pointed out the size of the resulting deficit with the sanitation fee removed — the one that sparked Mantello’s ire — Piotrowski said he would present at Tuesday night’s meeting two resolutions for the council to choose from: one that would establish the 2018 tax levy at the 1.77 percent tax increase included in Madden’s initial proposal and another that would allow the city to exceed the state tax cap. Late Monday, though, Madden spokesman John Salka said the tax cap override had to be pulled from the agenda because of legal requirements.
In his memo, Piotrowski pointed out that while the fee would have added $2.9 million in revenue, only $691,000 in new spending was included in the mayor’s proposal, leaving a $2.2 million gap even if that new spending is cut, including six new positions, among them a city engineer and a commissioner of general services.
“The City Comptroller’s Office has reviewed, since the month of July, every revenue line in the 2018 proposed budget,” Piotrowski wrote; “there is not a single revenue line that would allow for further increase based on historical trends in the General Fund.”