Mayor Ben Walsh (left) and Councilor Pat Hogan (right) have been at odds over a number issues in the lead-up to the Democratic primary for mayor. Credit: Mike Greenlar and Maddi Jane Brown | Central Current

When the Syracuse Common Council made $16 million in cuts to Mayor Ben Walsh’s proposed budget, Walsh and city employees held a blistering press conference.

Walsh called the cuts “draconian and dangerous.”

But how far do the cuts go?

Central Current dove into the numbers for three key city departments: the Division of Code Enforcement, the Syracuse Police Department and the Department of Public Works. 

Walsh has until Monday to determine whether he wants to veto any of the Common Council’s amendments. Councilor Corey Williams, the chair of the Finance, Taxation and Assessment Committee, has said the council plans to override any vetoes by the mayor. 

Councilors, including Williams, have said they made the cuts to the budget out of concern for the fiscal health of the city. City spending is projected to have jumped 33% from the 2022 fiscal year through the end of the 2025 fiscal year.

Under the council’s amendments, city residents would not have their property tax rate raised and the city would pull only about $14.5 million out of its fund balance to cover the budget’s structural deficit. 

Codes, police and DPW are three of the most visible services for city residents. Here’s what we found when we dug into the council’s cuts:

The council sidestepped two recommendations to rightsize the police’s overtime budget

Two years ago Walsh’s administration included in the city’s budget the largest cut to police overtime in 11 years. 

It chopped $1.3 million from Syracuse police’s overtime budget, or about 20%, dropping the allotment from $6.7 million to $5.4 million. 

Eight months after the budget went into effect, the police department had spent all $5.3 million. 

This year’s Common Council budget amendments try something similar. Councilors included a $1 million cut to police overtime. 

“We are simply asking the department to attempt to spend less,” Williams wrote. “That said, the Council will always support SPD with what they need to keep us all safe.”

Williams did not directly answer a question from Central Current about how the council planned to enforce the department’s overtime limits. 

 If the department goes over its overtime budget, leadership could come back to the council to increase its overtime allotment, Williams suggested.

However, Walsh believes that undercuts Williams’ arguments about the cuts being about fiscal sustainability.

‘What do you cut?’: Syracuse police chief says overtime spending not ‘feckless’

“If they’re conceding the money’s going to be spent, it’s just a question of when and how the council has influence over those decisions. Then it’s not about fiscal sustainability,” Walsh said. “It’s about control.” 

The department is again on pace to outspend its overtime budget in 2025. 

If the department outspends its overtime budget, it would be the 23rd time in the last 24 years. Police have spent more than $30 million over its overtime budget in that time frame. 

If the cuts remain in the budget, the department’s overtime budget will drop from $6.5 million to $5.5 million. The $5.5 million would be the second lowest budgeted overtime expenditure in the last decade, next to when Walsh last tried to reduce overtime. 

External auditors from The Bonadio Group, in the report about Walsh’s budget distributed to the council, pinpointed police overtime spending as an issue for councilors to address. 

But to limit excess overtime, Bonadio essentially suggested increasing the amount of budgeted overtime for the department. Bonadio recommended the council budget the average of the last three years of overtime spending plus 10%. That works out to about $9.4 million per year – about $4 million more than the council budgeted.

In Auditor Alex Marion’s report on Walsh’s proposed budget, he wrote that the city has failed to adequately budget for police overtime. In the 2023-24 budget, the last budget for which up-to-date spending is available, the police department outspent its budget by $3.1 million, or almost 50%. 

Marion, like Bonadio, recommended increasing the budgeted overtime spending for the police department to limit excess spending. 

“This line should be budgeted appropriately to meet the needs of the department without delay or transfers that require legislative approval,” Marion wrote in the report. 

Code enforcement funding still increased under the council’s amendments

While the council has proposed reducing spending in Walsh’s budget on the city’s Division of Code Enforcement, that office would still see an increase in allocated money from the 2025 budget. 

If the council’s amendments of the mayor’s budget hold, the city’s Division of Code Enforcement will see approximately a $1 million increase in funding rather than the $1.6 million proposed by Walsh. 

“We thought that was a reasonable compromise,” Williams wrote, “and we still do.”

However, Walsh contends the council’s cuts to code enforcement could undermine two efforts: an expansion of third-party permit review and the hiring of more inspectors. 

Permit review has agitated developers for years. Developers often don’t see reviews performed efficiently enough to keep housing projects on track. Over the last year, the city has piloted third-party permit review, a process by which a vetted contractor reviews permits for the city. 

City officials hoped to spend about $500,000 on contracted firms who could review permitting requests. Such a step could be a revenue generator, the mayor said. In the short term, third-party permit review would create revenue from permit fees. In the long term, it would help increase property values and assessments, Walsh said. 

“We currently have one commercial permit reviewer on staff, and that’s just not good enough, especially given the fact that we’re coming off of our busiest permitting year in documented history,” Walsh said. 

The council proposed reducing the $500,000 budgeted for permit review to $250,000. 

Williams maintained that if the program — which the city has piloted and councilors already approved contracts for — shows promise, codes could come back to the council for additional funding. 

Much of the rest of the funding the council suggests cutting was allocated to add inspectors to codes’ staff, which the city says are critical to keeping landlords in check and enforcing its rental registry. 

A report issued earlier this year by Marion shows that about 1-in-3 properties on the rental registry need to be inspected every year. Marion wrote in the report that only about half of those properties are issued a rental registry certificate every year.

Marion — and 38 other community members, including developers, Democratic politicians and housing advocates — pushed back against the cuts to codes and permit plan reviews. 

The auditor Friday published a letter asking Walsh to veto the cuts to code enforcement. 

In the letter, Marion wrote that the mayor should also reject an $869,000 cut in funding for the city’s law department. Marion and the coalition of advocates believe that money would prevent the city from fighting bad landlords in court.  

DPW rarely spends to budget

Walsh pinpointed the cuts to the Department of Public Works budget as some of the most reasonable to discuss, he said. 

“I think it’s more reasonable to entertain larger cuts given recent past performance of DPW. It’s reasonable to suggest that they could accommodate cuts,” Walsh said. “It doesn’t mean I’m supportive of them at this point.” 

That’s in part because DPW has struggled to spend its budget in each of the last five years. Since the 2020 fiscal year, DPW has left about $24.4 million of its budgeted funding unspent. While the 2025 fiscal year has not yet ended, DPW is again projected to underspend its budget. 

Under the council’s budget amendments, DPW is set to lose about $3.7 million in funding from the mayor’s proposed budget. In the immediate aftermath of the council’s vote to reduce spending in the mayor’s proposal, DPW Commissioner Jeremy Robinson said the cuts could affect city services like plowing, picking litter and sewer management. DPW’s salt and fuel budgets were also reduced, Robinson said.  

Walsh said that because DPW hasn’t spent their allocation, he believed there could be room to cut from its budget. Though, Walsh said, his office believes in the budget they originally submitted to the council. 

“If you’re making the argument that departments can move money around to accommodate your cuts, when you’re looking at police and fire, it’s not a sincere argument unless you acknowledge that something has to give because historically they spend all their budget,” Walsh said. “And because DPW doesn’t, I think it’s reasonable to have that conversation.”

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Chris Libonati is the managing editor of Central Current. He is a founding editorial member of the organization and was hired as Central Current's first reporter. He previously worked at the Syracuse Post-Standard...