Mayor Ben Walsh and several city department heads excoriated the Syracuse Common Council in a briefing after councilors approved $16 million in cuts to the mayor’s proposed budget.
The Council voted unanimously to approve 82 amendments to Walsh’s $348 million budget proposal. The amendments reduced many departments’ budgets by about 7%. Common Councilors framed the cuts – which were informed by a $20,750 external audit performed by the Bonadio Group – as a fiscally responsible check on Walsh’s budget at a time of economic uncertainty.
Walsh will now have 10 days to review the budget. If he vetoes the Council’s amendments, the Council could move to override his veto with a supermajority — which requires votes from six councilors.
Councilors insisted that these cuts reduced budgetary bloat without cutting any city employees positions or reducing city departments’ capacity to meet expectations.
The mayor and the leaders of the city departments facing the cuts disagree. Walsh said this year’s strained budget process calls to mind the crisis-driven process of drafting a budget during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said the administration and Common Council collaborated to make difficult decisions then.
“Today, we are in a better financial position than we’ve been in decades,” Walsh said. “The only crisis that exists is the one that the Council just created upstairs.”
City rank and file from various departments filled the Common Council chambers and formed a tough crowd, watching as the councilors slashed the mayor’s budget.
Afterward, leaders from the departments of police, fire, parks and recreation, code enforcement, and public works echoed Walsh’s dismay.
They outlined how the budget cuts would impact their employees and departmental output. Following the department leaders’ statements, Deputy Mayor Owens – a mayoral candidate – sounded off on the Council.
“Sledgehammer,” Owens said, “Not a scalpel.”
Police and fire departments
Syracuse Police Chief Joe Cecile believes if the budget amendments stick the department may have to cut:
- Its Armory Square overtime detail
- The dangerous panhandling overtime detail
- The “loud party” detail
- A new police academy class, meaning the department cannot add new officers this fiscal year
- Festival and parades overtime details focused on traffic and safety
- Dirt bike details
- A Jiu Jitsu program for its officers, the first of its kind in the state. The program is aimed at teaching officers grappling techniques rather than striking techniques
- Alternative response (mental health professionals)
- The Shotspotter program
The Common Council chose to reduce the police department’s overtime budget by $1 million, leaving the overtime budget at least $2 million below the actual $9 million spent on police overtime last year.
City Auditor Alex Marion, who reviewed Walsh’s budget and released his own report two weeks ago, called for the department to right-size the police overtime budget. The city has consistently under budgeted police overtime expenses. The police department has outspent its budgeted overtime expenditure in 21 of the last 22 years.
When a Central Current reporter asked Councilor Chol Majok – who chairs the Council’s Public Safety committee – why the Council chose to reduce the police overtime budget, given that the city auditor called for that budget to receive more funding, Majok dismissed Marion’s report.
“I am not responsible for the auditor’s logic,” Majok said. “We have to make sure that the city is here in a few years, and we have to make those tough decisions.”
Hogan said the police department’s overtime budget is usually subsidized by the department’s vacancies.
Meanwhile, Syracuse Fire Department Chief Michael Monds rejected Councilor Pat Hogan’s claim that the budget cuts will not reduce fire staffing. He believes they will.
Monds warned that reducing the fire department’s funding will directly increase fire-related injuries to both residents and firefighters. Syracuse exceeds the national average for resident fire injuries, according to Monds.
“We’ve been busier than ever,” Monds said.
Department of Public Works
Department of Public Works Commissioner Jeremy Robinson said the Council cut 9% from his budget.
Plowing, litter-picking, and sewer management could be limited by the budget cuts to DPW, according to Robinson.
“When you’re in your bed at night, our people are out there working,” Robinson said.
Robinson said cuts to salt and fuel budgets are the sort of cuts that will create a measurable negative impact on the quality of life for residents, especially if the city has a winter as intense as this past season.
He warned that the cuts may hamper DPW’s ability to effectively respond to the next big storm to hit the city.
Robinson said that in his department budget hearing with the Common Council, councilors told him he needed to spend more funds if he wanted to see more funds.
“They expressed to us that we need to spend more,” Robinson said. “I’m here to say, how do we spend more when you’re cutting? How do we deliver those services every single day when we’re cutting?”
Code Enforcement
Deputy Commissioner of Code Enforcement Jake Dishaw said a nearly $600,000 cut to codes budget could hamper the department.
He pointed to the $250K cut to the department’s professional services budget. Codes planned to use the money to review building plans for developers, some of whom could build housing.
Many of the city personnel who attended the budget hearing were worried code enforcement employees uncertain of their future, Dishaw said. Like Monds, Dishaw rejected the common councilors’ claims that these cuts will not lead to any city employees losing their jobs.
He called that characterization “maybe partially true, but mostly false.”
Dishaw believes code enforcement could lose:
- A project manager role that has existed for years and is crucial to the city’s shared services agreement with Syracuse University. “We will not be able to deliver on our promises for their new hotel, their new dormitories and all the other construction work that they have going on up there,” Dishaw said.
- Code Enforcement’s zoning director
- Two code inspector positions that the city had hoped to add. DiShaw told Walsh he thought he needed four inspectors, but agreed to budget for two. Now, those two are eliminated as well.
- Help from outside counsel in lawsuits against landlords, like the cases brought against the owners of Skyline and Nob Hill apartments. The Council cut $869,000 from the law department’s budget.
The deputy commissioner, like other department leaders, said that he frequently receives requests for work from the councilors themselves.
“I won’t have the resources to answer to get that done anymore,” Dishaw said. “It will be gone.”
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