The Kingston Common Council has decided it will take $50.1 million to manage the city government in 2023.
Mayor Steve Noble cut almost two million dollars off the proposed budget’s original ask before it got to the council. The operating budget was adopted on December 6.
Each year of Noble’s second term, the proposed budget which is a sort of wish list from the various departments, asks for a million or two more than the mayor agrees to put forward.
Excepting 2020, the first year the pandemic struck, the city in recent years has ended up spending more than the even the requested budget originally asked for as additional spending comes up during the year: $179,000 more in 2019. $2.45 million more in 2021 and $4 million more in 2022.
The overspending was offset by underestimates of income for which the city hadn’t budgeted. A large amount of unanticipated revenues from federal and state support during the pandemic has been the largest such source.
Par for the course, the adopted budget for 2023 amounted to $3 million less than the budget requested by the city departments.
The budget process
Predicting the future needs of a machine as intricate as a municipal government is not easy. Even with financial reports going back decades, it’s well known that history rhymes rather than repeats itself.
The first step of the budget process for the city government is the preparation by the city comptroller’s office, under the direction of John Tuey.
The mayor weighs and measures and produces his own recommended version This budget is presented to the council’s finance committee. After performing its due diligence, talking things over and double-checking with the heads of the city departments, the recommended budget is presented to the entire common council, which votes on adopting the budget for the coming year. If the mayor doesn’t like the adopted version, he can veto it.
Mayors T.R. Gallo in 2002, James Sottile in 2009, and Shayne Gallo in 2015 vetoed adopted budgets they didn’t like. The common council can override a veto with a supermajority vote. Mayor Noble has yet to veto a budget adopted by the council.
While the budget numbers rise higher every year, the property-tax rate does not. .
When mayor Shayne Gallo was on his way out in 2016, his budget included a four percent tax-rate hike on residential properties. This was excised.
For the seven straight years since Noble has been mayor, residential and commercial property tax rates have decreased. The city’s $17.6 million tax levy is at its lowest point since 2015.
In large part, this is because of the long years of rising property values. Higher assessed properties increase tax revenues even as the rates come down.
This year’s increases
Increased grant money for the city since Noble’s election has made budgeting without increasing property taxes easier. The city presently manages a $65-million portfolio of active grant funds.
In November, the heads of the various municipal departments were invited to meet with the five common council members of the finance committee to make their case for their portion of their requests.
The 2023 adopted budget sees some large increases in year-over-year spending in three departments in particular. The administration of public works got a boost from $699.4 thousand to $986.9 thousand. The sanitation department reported a budgetary increase from $1.224 million last year to $3.095 million in 2023. Spending on playgrounds and recreation centers jumped more than almost fourfold from $106,125 to $449,452.
Moneys also for the corporation counsel’s office increased from $469.7 thousand to $644.7 The city has spent time in court defending its housing-emergency declaration and supporting The Kingstonian mixed-used development. Perennial enemy of The Kingstonian and scion of Gottlieb Real Estate Neil Bender has sued the city over some component of the city 13 times since January 2020. All members of the department of the corporation counsel are paid salaries rather than working by the hour.
Mayor Noble has also seen fit to suggest for another raise for himself, the fourth over four years, bringing his total pay up $20,000 since 2019 to $95,000. The mayor defends his raises, arguing that the gradual increases were needed to bring his pay to the level of compensation accorded his colleagues in Poughkeepsie and Middletown.
“Executive compensation for elected officials is always a tough subject,” Noble said in a December 8 interview, “We put together what we felt was a reasonable approach to keep the salary in line with our peers. We don’t have city managers. And if you look at city managers’ salaries, they get paid quite well. So the mayor here in this city does both jobs. And that’s one of the things that we just tried to keep competitive. The salary of the mayor in the city, anyway, hadn’t been adjusted in over a decade plus.”
Other notable new expenses include funding for police overtime for increased traffic safety vigilance down Broadway, funding for the city’s first ambulance, and an extra thousand apiece in pay for each alderperson.
These are just some of the costs to run the single city in Ulster County. Costs are expected to keep rising until inflation subsides and the fever dream of this housing market falls to earth. Until then, the seven years without a homestead property tax raise is a pretty good run, even if it was only lowered a single penny in the 2023 adopted budget.
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