The Syracuse Common Council unanimously approved Tuesday an audit of the City’s Bureau of Information Technology.
Councilors proposed the audit in a letter sent Jan. 13 to city Clerk Patricia McBride. The letter, sent by the council’s Finance, Taxation and Assessment Committee, expressed concerns about the city’s attempt to implement a payroll modernization program and the money allocated to the Bureau of IT and the Office of Accountability, Performance and Innovation.
The implementation of the city’s payroll modernization program has been delayed and cost the city nearly $10 million since 2021. Days after reporting by Central Current revealed delays in the program, Chief Administrative Officer Frank Caliva resigned from the city’s administration. Caliva was hired to in part oversee payroll modernization.
The city budgeted $5.3 million to fund the Bureau of IT and API in 2025 and allocated another $12.7 million in its Capital Improvement Program to spend on IT.
Those expenditures come at the same time the city is preparing for the budget to have a $20 million structural deficit, requiring the city to dip into its coffers to cover the gap.
The council approved the Finance Committee’s plan to contract with FoxPointe Solutions, a division of the Bonadio Group. The contract will cost the city $88,000.
According to Williams, the audit should take about two months to complete.
Brooke Schneider, a spokesperson for Mayor Ben Walsh, told Central Current in a statement that the mayor’s office welcomes the audit and will work with the council to ensure the audit is “successful and transparent.”
The council signaled it may harden to other IT expenditures in the near term. Councilors held an item that would have nearly $1 million on new equipment.
Councilor Corey Williams, who chairs the Finance Committee, has pushed back against Walsh and the city administration’s overall spending.
Williams and Walsh volleyed letters to the editor ahead of Walsh’s final State of the City speech.
The councilor argued in his letter that the city is spending money it does not have and that it is balancing its budget by pushing additional costs on city residents by adding fees and increasing taxes. Williams also wrote that the city is on a path to “insolvency or bankruptcy.”
Walsh called Williams’ concerns about the city’s fiscal future “hand-wringing” and called that talk a “tired Syracuse pastime.”
Walsh would go on to acknowledge in the letter and his State of the City speech that the city has not achieved financial sustainability.
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