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Light Rain City to Skelos: please reconsider deficit bill
City Manger calls on Senate Majority Leader to provide relief to taxpayers
To the Editor:
Upon taking office in January, our administration inherited an unprecedented $10 million deficit. Since then, we declared a fiscal crisis and began a thorough and thoughtful process — working around the clock and scouring the budget, line by line — to find potential savings. We have made every effort to slash costs and increase revenue across the board.
We saved $1.9 million through terminations, layoffs and an early-retirement incentive; cut departmental spending by more than $2 million; implemented a strict overtime policy that reduced annual overtime costs by approximately 70 percent, and launched a local development corporation to help boost our local economy.
Additionally, we welcomed the New York state comptroller’s office to conduct an audit of our financial controls. We are proud that this administration crafted the first truly balanced budget the city has produced in many years. At his request, we provided Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos with an 18-page document enumerating our inherited deficit and the millions of dollars in cost-savings we have achieved. We have demonstrated through spending cuts, personnel reductions and tough decisions that we are not simply looking to bond our way out of this fiscal crisis.
While we have now balanced our budget, going forward, we still require assistance, as we’re left footing the previous administration’s bill.
As such, we were encouraged and appreciative when both Senator Skelos and Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg sponsored legislation on our behalf that would have allowed the city to issue serial bonds to pay down its deficit over 10 years — and provide much-needed relief to taxpayers.
We have made significant cuts and completely changed the culture of government in the city. All of this was accomplished before we applied for what was considered routine state financing assistance. Unfortunately, due to Senator Skelos’s decision not to pass this bill in May, our residents will now be hit with an additional tax surcharge of approximately $183 per year for the next three years. We were profoundly surprised and disappointed by this stunning and seemingly unprecedented reversal.
