What is that transition look like?

Can you talk us through what that would be?

Yeah, yeah, I think it's um the hiring is the is the big part, again, given the fact that she has already part of the administration, I do think she mentioned this in one of the other she doesn't have to make those calls otherwise on the value of the outside working with that.

So yeah, I think that's one of the main examples of sort of learning from being here.

I had a ambition team on like something.

But uh we had policy committees and they wrote out reports and they've got a nations, and it was a pretty robust process.

Rob Robinson say this uh just a brief question, like what advice would you give to somebody who wants to go into politics?

Yeah, uh great question.

So what I would say is um first and foremost, if we can work uh uh read the news, uh be engaged in the community.

One of the things that I have to do is uh wherever whenever possible you don't want the first time you're walking into uh a particular space or meeting with group of people the first time meeting when you're trying to spend something to have a fair level of group.

But I think having credibility in the community having spent time with volunteering or vendor when you maybe do it as caring for the community as a citizen, first and foremost really how do you think of it in a better way to anything is your homework be informed, be engagement or make sure have an understanding of the need to help people to be able to sort of make some participant on the program the way that you have questions for you then you're already on the path of it.

Um Erika Buchko, I'm from Manoa and I work for Cornell Cooperative Extension.

Please get off someone before you go.

Um anyway, that's really my question.

So you just mentioned um being engaged in your in your community if you're interested in being in politics.

Now with the number of years that you've been in politics, would you suggest joining a planning board or a zoning board of your local community?

And why would you choose the one you chose?

Is it a choice of planning?

Planning or zoning.

So I guess it depends on the community.

So we have a planning commission and a board of zoning appeals.

So planning our planning commission actually oversees most of the zoning application where the zoning appeals is for uh potentially various uh.

So it really depends on everything.

So first I would just say make sure you have a clear understanding of which one does what, and then it would be uh a question of um your what skill set in the public.

In terms of is that a good is that a good stepping stone to what the leg and publisher?

I think in many cases um it could be.

Um I think that there are there's certain things that you obviously you'll be you'll be connected to what's happening, uh, new projects and investments, and then that's what we've got.

Uh um learn what it's like to get and to public pressure, which is a big part of the job.

Um, and so I think that that's that's healthy.

Um you'll learn how to work in a group dynamic.

Um I've never operated a I've been on boards, but I've never been in a legislative, I've never been legislative.

It's a different every time I get frustrated with the company.

Uh the only overall last budget, not what's getting uh obviously working.

But it's a different dynamic.

It's an executive copy of vision.

I can try to move people before there's a lot of failure.

I think the only potential downside from literally is um you're gonna have uh you're gonna have a like a operation in the voyage.

You're gonna have something that people can point to say, hey, you supported that concrete plant that went in my backyard, I'm not gonna go.

Um so we just have to be conscious of any public roles you have uh and decisions you make are a matter of public recording.

Hi, Cynthia Dowdell, Anadaga Hill.

Um you talked about the recent switch in growth.

What year did that happen?

What percentage was it, and is there a projection of where you see the growth of the city within the next five to ten years?

Good question.

I don't know that I have a way to answer a question.

Um the numbers escaped me again.

The the 2020 census was when we saw the population increase.

It was probably just one.

But again, the first time in seven years were uh since then between those ten years you're getting estimates, and we've seen the estimates kind of go like that.

Um really trying to population.

So I think that uh in terms of where the population goes from here, it's gonna depend on a number of things.

Um refugee resettlement uh is is a big reason why we need to be more popular.

So uh if we see a wrong period of time, we do not settle these, in fact, it's having the largely the the the exit and the um that only population has remained pretty stable.

So um, you know, I think we certainly expect that with my investment.

We are going to see with the county in the region would see growth.

Um, how much of that we capture in the city, I think is largely up to us.

Um we try to be very aggressive in housing development because I think we value what our communities have built the most follow the affordable housing fastest, going to be best conditioned possible.

Of course, we need related language that we think the jury still have a lot that was like, but just for context, um congratulations on your last.

Um the uh I think the context, so right now we're somewhere in the range of 146,000.

Our population keeping 50.

But we're a city built for at least that.

So we've got to ask him questions any time.

Surprisingly, not really.

I sit in a different building.

Umisa Evans live in the Shaffmer neighborhood.

So I actually have two different questions.

Um, you mentioned the snow removal, and I'm curious as to if they are regulated to like very specific areas and like which areas are they, and do the property owners have a choice whether or not they utilize the service.

And then my second question is just a sneaking thing that I've been wondering on the corner of Salina and I call it Castle, but yeah.

What's gonna happen there?

Okay.

Uh snow removal.

So we have if you go on um you go on our website and go on the uh on the scope page, you can see a map of our sidewalks and all the way.

I'm glad you asked about responsibility.

So it is a supplemental sidewalk program, which is the same thing for what downtown the download does.

Uh we have taken on responsibility for maintaining uh and fixing sidewalks.

This normal removal responsibility remains with the with the property owner.

Um so that's why we technically have to call it supplemental program.

Um so again, when we first established the map, we've been able to grow it now for at least the past couple of years, right?

So where we've expanded the area, work with DPW with the transportation planners, again try to prioritize those process for so in Gratmore Plenwood, Gabis uh minimum with the others.

Um that's really how we prioritize it.

The goal has always been to expand it from the traction.

As we know, um, you know, just have doing a password sidewalk out doesn't account for ice and other things that help me stay in property.

But about 25% of the population.

Uh order of MLK uh in Salina.

So that is a uh talking about the parking lot specifically, so we all had to deal with that.

Um we have been, you know, has been interested in in the past, but we I always felt that it should that whatever it's repurposed to is done in function of the ability to develop the Sears building, which is what we covered.

So the good news is um uh state CEO uh is now a trial owner of a series building, who one of their affiliate.

Um they acquired it with the uh uh redeveloping the building and the surrounding vacant land, including hopefully our parcel um into uh a mixed use property that first and foremost includes um beyond that program, which is a state uh workforce development program where we're looking to tolerate many of our workforce development programs.

So we haven't they haven't fully committed to the series building yet just because they still need the uh usability and stability and all of that, but but uh in an ideal scenario what we're working towards is if we're gonna redevelop a series building in a broader redevelopment concept for the vacant property on both sides of that, but it's made also additional development um uh use housing, common uses of that work in the um I just want to congratulate you on an incredible tenure that you've had.

You have so much to be proud of, and it wasn't always a cakewalk.

Um, you know, I'm thinking about 2020.

Uh the pandemic, all the protests, you know, having city police officers support that, and that just showed a lot about you and how you handled that.

I thought that was really incredible.

Um what I'm curious about is for you um highlights, low lights, what's your most proud um accomplishment, what was the most fun thing that you got to do, and what was kind of the most challenging.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, the second question is a lot easier to answer than the first.

Um for me, no doubt about it, that the night that oxygen is like this happening with uh someone that things happen topic time.

Overall, those violent uh intimates have been going to costly that we've already seen officers looking for that uh I have trouble again because there's there's been a lot of really uh really interesting things that are team, I've also had a time guard meeting in the other things to be like we're things uh talking about housing.

Anytime we've done written findings on homes where we're with the families that are actually talking about first time, I think first generation homeowners, um the last one we did down at the north values uh women who are talking about the light.

Those are uh those are the moments that just like change.

So is that one pride?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Um so those moments uh I I absolutely love um anything involving kids, I love going to uh I I'll not check the secret out now.

If any class asked me to come to the class level, uh good idea.

I don't want to bring function, but they always ask me how much money I make, and I always ask me if I learned, and uh you can go completely side of this, and then we got better law.

But um the job is is really heavy and it weighs on the sort of more less of how to use how to do I think um big deal about this guy.

I I remember him as he was just the new staff, we were cameraman.

Thank you.

Uh congratulations.

Um, uh City of Syracuse.

So uh similar to that question, you talked a lot about your wins.

Um what is something that you wanted to implement that you weren't able to to do, and what were some of the barriers that kind of prevented you from doing that?

Yeah, so I think that when I think that the the frustration that the most frustrating part of this job is just the pace.

Um never making some.

I actually just got an email from who I would consider a friend who is expressing their frustration and disappointment.

Um but that's the that's the frustrating part, especially things that you don't directly control.

So um housing projects in particular, uh Syracuse housing authority projects, even more specifically.

Those are hard because we you know we can identify resources, we can control permitting and approvals, we can we can do a lot of things, but you know, we can't build the buildings, we can't you know secure all their financing and those things in time and uh so some when I think about some of the biggest projects, of course, the East Damus project with the housing authority.

Good news is we've they've closed on phase one, so that's the controller is seeing in there with knowledge right now.

Um that works is better way.

That was like wrong spot.

Um we got there in phase two, uh, which is the new construction on the screen uh didn't ship those other projects here.

I would have thought eight years ago we would have been trying to write.

Uh but I'm glad that it's up to a few other projects like that.

The memory were doing a project on the north side, it's been really frustrating in that especially because the punch of the landhouse caught on fire, knowing how important that is adding really frustrating how we uh so big projects like that that just take too much time.

Beyond that, I mentioned in the last budget process, I'm really frustrated about how that went down and was really hard to have a good working relationship.

I think a lot of it was the politics related to the they didn't have legitimate questions and concerns, but uh the way it went down wasn't it wasn't good on their end, but frankly, on our end, we were we were dealing with a very public um uh uh separation with our budget director uh and uh in dealing with all that drama, and so this past year in general, but that time specifically was frustrating and not anything defined how uh yeah, I guess um not being in full control of all of our priorities and then just navigating the politics of the job, which was determined to deal with it.

But for me, and I think most public servants, I think I've always looked specific.

With our land acknowledgement.

Focus Greater Syracuse would like to acknowledge with respect the onondaga nation, fire keepers of the Hoda Noshone, the Indigenous peoples whose ancestral lands we now stand.

I'd also like to take a moment to thank our engagement sponsors, National Grid and Syracuse University.

Their sponsorship allows focus to continue operating this program at a much low lower tuition rate.

Joining us this evening as volunteers, we have Jerry.

Tell us what you do.

Um talk to us about local government budget and finance.

Corey, I will not make you go first.

This is, I think, your first time with Citizens Academy.

Um, and then we'll start the QA and we'll have everybody line up.

They have to be brave and line up to ask you questions.

Any comments or questions before we get started?

I decided to hear that.

Hey, congratulations are you one year.

I thought you were unopposed.

I apologize.

Do you have to get signaled?

And I was irrationally afraid of that.

I'm not gonna lie.

Now my wife wants to know you can check about two months afterwards.

You can actually go on and see who the right ins were.

My wife cannot wait to figure out what the case.

Well, congratulations to you as well, then.

Not gonna lie, my first election, my proudest thing was that nobody nominated Mike Hennigan as a write-in, who's the local grocery store owner of Nichols, who by the way cannot be mayor because he doesn't live in Liverpool, but every year he'd get at least five votes.

And I was like, I beat my hunt again.

You got no one.

Perfect.

You can go in any order, but not Corey first.

That's just not fair.

You want me to start?

Okay, I would love for you to start.

So good at evening.

I'm Christy Smiley.

I am the chief fiscal officer for Onadaga County.

I actually just recently took that position on in May.

Um, the county's annual budget is 1.6 billion dollars.

The county's fiscal year runs January through December of each year.

Um, we kick off our budget process usually in May of each year.

The county has gone to a uh baseline budgeting approach, and what that means is my staff in finance works to put together budgets for next year that give them the um resources needed to continue current service levels at next year's costs.

So we work on building that throughout May.

Um, and then we um anticipate what revenue we'll see.

Most of our departments get state and federal reimbursement.

Um, and then obviously our local component is property tax and sales tax.

Um, once we're able to figure all of that out, depending on whether there's surplus money or a deficit.

We then, if there's surplus money the last couple years, the county has taken the approach to use it in one-time initiatives that'll either further the tax base, um, promote sales tax in terms of economic development or one-time initiatives that are obviously a priority to the county executive in this community, such as lead funding, uh, mental health and schools is where we've put a lot of that money over the last couple years in terms of one-time expenditures.

Um, ultimately, the county executive proposes his executive budget on or before September 15th of each year to the county legislature.

Oh, speak up, sorry.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Um, so the county legislature that's then reviewed by the Ways and Means Committee.

There's a public hearing held, obviously, for constituent feedback in terms of the budget, and then Onadoga County's budget has to be adopted on or before October 15th of each year.

So we just finished adopting our 2026 budget.

Um, so that'll go into effect in January this year.

Um, on top of the budget, I'm also responsible for obviously all the county's investment initiatives and bonding for debt service.

So that's kind of a general overview.

Um, the other thing that finance does is we actually about 10 years ago centralized all our fiscal functions into one house.

Um, so we do all the back office functions for all of our departments, whether that be grant management, claiming federal and state reimbursement, you know, processing requisitions and purchase orders, paying the bills, all of those type of things, being able to centralize that has really been able to allow us to better analyze our revenue streams and leverage those that to the best ability to try to you know keep local dollars down as much as possible.

Um the only other thing I like to talk about is when we talk about a 1.6 billion dollar budget, it's kind of staggering.

Um so to kind of put that into perspective, as I said, we get a lot of state federal reimbursement grants, the local component of that and really what the county um to be able to continue new initiatives, you know, kind of lives and dies on sales tax um and property tax are really the and property tax is the only other thing that we control.

That's roughly um about 530 million dollars.

And the reason I bring that up is 72% of that $532 million goes to mandates um and public safety, leaving less than 30% of every other local dollar for our parks, our roads, our back office function.

So I just think it's kind of good to put that into perspective because when you first start talking about that 1.6 billion dollar number, it's kind of hard to wrap your head around what does that get spent on.

Um, and then just even the 1.65% of that is mandates, salaries in fringe.

Um, so that kind of a perspective in terms of where the dollars go.

Thank you.

Do you want to go next call?

I'll go to the third.

I have to say, I do every time I do this, I go after Kristen, and she has so many numbers just in her head.

I have to say, I do every time I do this, I go after Kristen, and she has so many numbers just in her head, and then I'm like, that's like a household budget, but really big.

Um it's I'm gonna make you feel good when you go after me.

But um with the village of well, obviously it's one square mile, so significantly smaller.

Um a lot of people don't understand when I say I'm the mayor of Liverpool, they think Greater Liverpool, which is the town of Salina and the town of Clay.

I'm the the mayor for the village, which is quite literally one square mile.

So our budget is significantly smaller than the county's.

Um my clerk printed this out for me.

So our budget is about 4.2 million.

And um I will say that our police take up close to half of that.

Um police department is extremely expensive to have.

When I first got elected, we did have to raise taxes, and we sent out a letter explaining why, explaining what it was going through.

We are very transparent with our constituents about our budget.

You can find all of this information on our website that we've updated.

And um I I do remember when I when I first moved in the village of Liverpool, everyone's like, I love the village, but those taxes.

And um I I have to say that our taxes go to pay for the services that you get.

I'm I'm a huge fan of paying taxes.

Um, I think that they benefit all people as a whole, and not the bad thing that the people kind of make them out to be.

But we do get um international funding.

There's something called the chips money, and that is for roads.

Um we're going to actually be using it to put um push button um beacons that flash to give crosswalks.

The county very graciously gave us permission to put those in, which was way easier than I thought it would be.

Um, and um we also do get you know a lot of grants, you know, we really live and breathe for grants.

Um we're currently working on a New York forward and a downtown revitalization grant for the 2026 year where we'll be submitting it because we've already missed the deadline for 2025 and pressed grants, but um, you know, the it's amazing how quickly, you know, a four-point what did I even say?

Whatever it was.

What did I say 4.4?

How quickly that goes, you know.

So um even in a one square mile mile village.

Um a lot of it is health care for our employees.

Our employees get fabulous benefits, but um they are pricey.

Yeah, I'm sure people will have questions.

Good evening, everyone.

I when I looked at the panel, I actually thought that it was a pretty good cross-section.

You know, we have an executive, we have you know someone from the operational side, and I I think that my role here is to represent the legislative capacity of the budget.

Um, and I'm the chair of the finance committee here in the city.

And yeah, for better or worse, I I suppose.

Um, in terms of our budget, we have uh about uh a roughly 350 million dollar budget annually, and that does not include the city schools.

They have about a 650 million dollar operating budget.

They get about another 350 in grants still our school district.

Uh they have about a billion dollar annual budget, but we don't we don't touch that.

Um we kind of act as a pass through for a little bit of their money, but that's uh a whole different thing.

Um we operate on a different cycle, which always kind of throws me off from the county.

I I hear you all finalizing your budget in October.

It's just such a interesting thing.

Um, the so in the city, and I'm not sure what Mayor Walsh communicated with y'all.

Um, but the the budget team prepares the budget basically from about January to the middle of March, and the mayor is required to deliver the executive budget to the common council on April 1st.

Um we typically have about a month of budget hearings.

We have each of the um operational divisions come in front of us, talk to us about their budget, what changed year to year, you know, if there was a big up or a big down, why that happened, different priorities, you know, kind of the vision of the department.

And then the council has, I forget the exact timeline, um, but we have about a month to propose amendments to the mayor's budget.

And um, you know, what do we do as a legislative body?

And I know that there is a whole lot there, a whole lot out there in the media over the current year.

I'm not gonna pretend like we uh it was more of a public disagreement than I would have liked to have seen.

Um, you know, but what do we do?

We look at each of the budgets and try or all the departmental budgets and try to figure out is that appropriate, you know, can we bump them up?

Can we bump them down?

Um for us, what that process looked like is we looked at about five years worth of spreadsheets.

We looked at you know, annual budget to annual budget, we looked at annual budget to we looked at budget to budget budget actual.

Um so pretty much what were they budgeted for and what did they spend, and what did they get budgeted for year over year?

And you know, I I will still kind of defend a lot the decisions that we made.

Um in the city we have what we refer to affectionately as a structural deficit.

That means that we spend more money than we take in.

And part of that is um, you know, we do get a good chunk of our revenue from the sales tax, but in the city, the the dominant form of our income comes from property tax.

And when we look at nonprofit exemptions, the number that you'll hear thrown around is you know 4852.

Um about 48% of our properties are on the tax roll, about 52% are tax exempt.

And so we have, yep, 4852.

Um that's a dynamic that we you know we have that we have to live with year over year.

Um my first year we passed a budget with a roughly 20 million dollar deficit, which is about a five percent ish deficit.

Um, I think the the major conflict between the council and the mayor's office this past cycle was that the initial budget proposed by the mayor had you know between uh a 28 and 34 million dollar deficit, depending on how you look at it, which was close to about a 10% operating deficit.

And um with our amendments, I think we wound up proposing a budget with about a 16% or $16 million deficit, which again is about a five percent deficit, meaning that one out of every 20 dollars that we spend as a city for the entire year is coming out of our savings.

Um what else do I have here?

I guess other important aspects of our budget.

Um we get a mid-year report every you know, January 1 would be our mid-year.

We're uh a July 1 to July 1 fiscal year.

And so the the mini report will begin to get generated in the beginning of January.

We kind of take that and we again look at that budget to actual, you know, where did they say they were going to be, where are they halfway through the year, and what are the projections?

Um at that point, often the mayor's office will say, hey, we want to take a little money from here and push it over to there.

Um there's virtually no friction to make transfers between departments.

Um, for example, DPW has nine operating units that each have their own budget.

They can shift money from you know any one of the nine operating units to the other.

But if they wanted to shift from DPW to fire, they would have to come to the council to get the approval to do that.

And so we will we'll see around a min-year transfers, probably early February is realistic.

Um another thing, we have an entirely different capital plan than we do for our budget.

And to complicate things, our capital plan is a 12-month January one to December 30 plan rather than a July one to June 30.

And so it kind of you know crosses two different budget years, which complicates everything.

Um, but that is actually, you know, it's a plan.

Um it's typically a five-year plan.

I think there's about three billion dollars, maybe four billion dollars.

A lot of money in our in our capital plan in that kind of five-year outlook.

Um and that includes both cash capital that the city is putting in from the general fund, but also what we what we bond.

Um we typically go out to the bond market about once a year, and kind of everything that the council approves to be bonded for, we kind of sit on it for a little bit, we go to the bond market, we put together a big package, and um we get those funds usually late in June.

And from a legislative side, you do need a supermajority to bond for anything, um, meaning we need six of the nine counselors to to vote in favor of the bond item in order for it to move forward.

And you know, we've run into a challenge with that a couple different times where we can get to a five-person majority, but we can't quite quite get to that supermajority required to bond.

Um that might be it for for me for now, but glad to answer any questions.

I do um as he was speaking, I'm realizing all of these things I I failed to mention.

Um of the things um we also um our just base expenses went beyond our income.

But we do have what what is called a fund balance, and we for a small village we have a very healthy fund balance, and that money is put into a savings account that is specifically for municipalities with a very high interest rate.

So it's not called very low risk.

Very low risk.

We are required by law to to any investment we make.

We basically can't lose our our public funds, so we have a very limited amount of things that we can actually put our money into to generate.

Yeah, I want to say this by the savings account best I knew.

I think it was like a six percent interest rate, which is a community trust or one of the different collaborations, yeah.

Yeah, so I mean it's um it is very challenging, but it is these days since COVID, it is nearly impossible to keep your budgets within just what you're earning in taxes.

It's the expenses are astronomical for basic items.

Um I talk about we got a grant for a street sweeper, and by the time we were able to purchase it, it was like $75,000 more than the year before.

It was and the gentleman that sold it to us literally sold it and held the price for us until we got the grant, because grants take so long.

And these days it's a it's very problematic because you get a grant for the price it was, and then by the time you purchase it two years from then, it's not that pleasing.

But I do think that's a great thing to talk about as we talk about the cost.

The county's budget.

We are fortunate we are not operating on a um deficit in ours.

We have a balanced budget for 2026, and we do have a fund balance.

We have a regulation for our general fund for a 15% fund balance based on our revenues.

Uh the county is at about a little over 200 million dollars in terms of fund balance right now.

But when I talked about earlier, you know, really relying on sales tax shortly after COVID, all of us saw an influx in sales tax where we're seeing five, six percent growth.

Typically, sales tax growth is one percent, maybe one and a half, maybe two in a really good year, year over year growth.

But when you're talking about, we talked about fringes, wages, supplies, everybody knows the inflation that's going on.

Your budget grows by much more than one percent each year.

So that's the struggle that all governments have is how do you either curb spending or operate and get a balanced budget?

So I think that's a great point that we all you know kind of struggle with and try to figure out um in terms of our budgets.

We've got a fund balance about a 110-ish million give or take.

It's actually pretty big.

Um and a lot of that was COVID funds.

Um they kind of allowed there's a calculation that they allowed you to take some of the the ARPA funding and put it into your fund balance.

It was like a five.

It's a revenue loss calculation based on what the anticipated growth in your revenue would have been.

Yeah, it was very spent all of ours.

Um our fund balance is like 1.4, which is extremely good for a small village.

Yeah.

So if I to hear this, I boggles my mind.

But anyway, yeah.

Well, and keeping a healthy fund balance as we talked about, the bonding issue is very important too, because the rating agencies that's one of your score items on your scorecard, and actually they want you to have a fund balance of like 30 to 450%, which is unrealistic for county government and I believe unresponsible to our constituents because we basically would then be over taxing if we got to a threshold like that.

Um so that's one of the things is obviously keeping that rainy day fund as we call fund balance, but also making sure we're prudent with it and not getting it too high where we're over taxing our constituents, and it's that's the balance, but also trying to keep it high enough that you have good ratings, so when you go to bond, you have good interest rates.

So it's it's kind of that balancing act all the time.

And with the village, it's the complete opposite.

We at one point had too much of a fund balance, and they dinged us.

I don't know what that was.

I mean, I was in I wasn't in office at that time, but we actually had to find ways of kind of dispersing the fund balance to sort of minimize how much of the flight we have.

So it's a that delicate balance of like too much and too little.

Very first question.

Everybody can line up with Cynthia gets a first question.

Such a risk.

Good evening, Cynthia Dowdell.

Umadaga Hill.

Um who audits?

You all.

Oh, we um we have a firm that audits.

Um, us, and I'm gonna actually be meeting with them in a couple weeks to kind of go over the budget and what they've discovered.

And yeah.

Is that the same with the county?

So on the county side, we have the controller's office, and one of their functions is to audit our programs and services.

So we actually have an independent elected that does go in and audit our different programs and services, right?

So the so the controller is, I mean, it's not the state controller.

I mean, we have a county, there is a state one as well.

We do get audited by our funding provider, so the state will come in and audit some programs like our different social service programs we've been at, you know, um DOT feds will at different times for programs, so we can get audited for through a variety, whether it be our internal controller, the state, um, the federal government, and then we do have um an independent auditor that reviews our financial statements every year and gives a you know an unqualified opinion.

So those are reviewed each year, but we do get audited by a variety of sources.

And so in the city, we too have a an elected auditor, um, but he doesn't audit our financials.

Um he's kind of more programmatic and looks at um different initiatives and and what we've done towards it rather than our actual budget.

Um we do have we use the Bonadio Group right over kind of in the inner harbor there.

Do you all as well?

Yep.

Um they're you know, well known, reputable, um, been around for a while, and so they audit our financials.

Um we also have audit partners that look at a lot of our grant operations and make sure that you know we're we're spending money where we told our the grantor that we were going to and you know that all of our bills are paid, and you know, we we have many of those audited prior to submitting to whether the state of the feds for reimbursement.

Thank you.

Hi, kind of a carfact now.

I live in Lincourt, although I graduate from Liverpool High School many, many moons ago.

Um I serve on the Lincoln School Board, and so I was happy to hear about fund balance because that was going to be one of my questions, but you answered it by saying that you know it gets too high, and then you have to decrease it because I thought only school people had to do that delicate dance with the fund balance, but I'm happy to hear that there's other people that share that frustration and that um misery.

So my question is for Corey.

Because Syracuse City Schools is one of the top the big five in the state where they don't have like you know the traditional school board.

Do they also have a fund balance and they have to go through the same?

They sure do.

It's it's interesting.

Um because when we get granted our credit rating, they actually look at the fund balance of both the school and the city combined.

I know, right?

It's it's a double dip right there.

It's it's uh funny quirky thing.

Um but yep, they have you know, they have their own budget team, they have their whole financial arm because again, we you know just purely operational, their budget is about two times that of all municipal services.

Yeah, we get dinged on our fund balance because it's always too high, but our financial person is like I don't want it down to the level that they suggest because it's too low.

That's like having you know $15 in your bank account.

Like, who does that?

Yeah.

I'm like thinking.

We have the Gleason Center, which is a building in the public own.

And then we we have a pool of money for restoring it and things like that to kind of help to disperse that.

So we still have it, but we don't.

It's just hidden in little pockets.

Yes, exactly.

And because it is what they recommend is too low.

I mean, you have one sewer issue, and you're and it's garbage.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's easy when you're on a post, right?

I got 38 write-ins, and I'm sure that go from Donald Duck to Mickey Mouse to Donald Trump to who knows what again.

Yeah, kind of we'll see when we get there.

You've already talked a little bit about cash flow, and you've already talked a bit about grants.

And for the town of Scottless, we suffer the same kind of issues that you talked about in terms of getting the grant approved.

And the prices that you quoted don't work out.

But grants come with either a match requirement or every grant that I've ever dealt with comes with a reimbursement process.

So I know that for very small municipalities, it sometimes excludes them from the grant process because they can't front that money in the manner that's required.

We've gone with patchworks of quilts on some pro or quilt patchwork on some projects with grants.

But for Christy and for Corey, I assume as well, you are both at times the grantee, or you are the grantor.

And just wondering how you might or might not have a sensitivity in either one of those roles to those match requirements and also for the reimbursements that sometimes lag across fiscal years.

Sure.

So I will default to you on this one.

Sure, sure, sure.

Yeah, so the county is fortunate that we do get a lot of grants, but most of our grants are reimbursed, which means obviously most of them are on a quarterly basis.

So we have to front the money until we reimburse.

And fortunately, we do get relatively timely payments now that we are outside of COVID.

That was one of the biggest things during COVID was the state, um, and even at times the federal government slowed down reimbursement.

And it was an issue for the county where we were very closely having to pay attention to our cash balances at that point in terms of getting in reimbursement.

So it is something that we are constantly balancing.

We have a grants management unit within finance that that is one of their sole responsibilities as reviewing on a monthly quarterly basis.

You know, what have we built?

What have we not gotten?

And if we haven't gotten in, why?

Um, and is this a trend that we're seeing so that we know what that impact may be for our cash flows.

The majority of county grants do there is the majority of them, I would say do not have match requirements.

There certainly are some.

Um a lot of ours do not have that, but um, it's something that we obviously have to plan for, and it oftentimes when that's happened, we then have to go over to the county legislature and ask for fund balance to do that.

Um so that is something that we'll take over for a fund balance resolution if we need a match for or identify savings within the department that we can repurpose those funds to be able to get the match.

But yes, it's a delicate balance in terms of the reimbursement.

Um, you know, we're lucky today that we have a very strong cash position, so it's not something that is on my radar every day.

Um, but specifically during COVID, it was something that we were reviewing constantly.

And one of the things that the county did coming out of COVID is we've always used PeopleSoft, but we've been implementing in a couple new modules that allow us to better track what's been billed and not received, um, so that we can have reports at our fingertips for those type of things, and actually also just a project costing module that lets us better manage those grants because one of the struggles we had from a fiscal management is each the county, the city we have an account structure, you know, supplies, personnel.

But you may get a state grant where part of it is marketing and part of it is you know, advertisement, whatever the categories may be, but they don't line up to our account structure.

So there was a lot of manual tracking to make sure we didn't overspend in those budget categories and have to go back for amendments or doing that ahead of time.

So we've implemented a lot of um tools and sources um and towards our um accounting system to be able to better track those things in real time so we have that data at our fingertips.

And I would echo much of that and just kind of throw a couple you know, wrinkles in and just things to think about.

Um, one is that we've left money on the table at times with grants that we don't have our act together enough to be able to to apply for reimbursement.

Um, you know, one that comes to mind is the the chips money, which is our our highway funds.

Um but fortunately you have a 18-month window where you can go back, and so we've gone and you know reclaimed the funds that we hadn't initially claimed for.

Um but from the other side being the grantor, um we've had challenges with the federal government and the community development block grant, CDBG.

Um we didn't get our funds from the federal government.

I think we were about nine or ten months late.

Um, and those grants are giving are given to many of our nonprofit organizations within the community.

And it's I mean, there is a rub there, you know, where we're nonprofits were having to take out loans to make up for the funds that they were promised that we couldn't give them because we didn't get the money from the feds.

And timelines not lining up can be can be really challenging.

And again, you know, we talk about just the fact that the county has a October fiscal year, we've got a July fiscal year.

Where are you all?

July.

July, yep.

And you know, any nonprofit can be all over the calendar.

And so making sure that you get the funds you need in the appropriate fiscal year to be able to, you know, pay all your invoices or apply for reimbursement can be really tricky.

By the way, fabulous mayor of Mary.

Because we're so interminating.

Yeah.

Peter Brown, uh, east side of Syracuse.

So when we spoke to Mayor Walsh, he mentioned that the fund balance over his time here grew from I think 50 million to 110, 120.

Um, you just mentioned that a lot of that was due to the COVID funds coming in.

I guess my question is, you know, if if the city is running a deficit of 15 to 25 million dollars a year, is that fund balance gonna disappear in six years?

Or does that deficit not affect the fund balance?

Uh that's at the heart of the the kind of the conflict between the council and the mayor's office this past cycle.

Um I think that everyone who works in this building can recognize our you know, short-term, mid-term, and long-term financial challenges.

I think that there is a little bit of difference of opinion of how quickly we have to make changes to make sure we don't run out of that fund balance.

Um, you know, if we get to a point where that starts to get depleted and we're looking at um pretty big deficits, uh it'll it will necessitate a change in our budget.

And you know, we've tried really, really hard not to reduce our workforce and try to get creative to make sure we're also not reducing services, right?

You know, because in the end, the the public money that we spend is either going to employees or to make our community safe or to make our community a place where you all want to live.

And it's really tempting to ignore the financial challenges and want to continue to provide that same level or even not even the same level, a better level of service to the community.

Um, but at what point do we have to start taking drastic action is ultimately that you know, not even million dollar, the the hundred million dollar question.

And um, I'm not sure if Mayor Walsh mentioned it to you, but um the prior fiscal year we had the council had approved a budget with a roughly 20 million dollar deficit, and we actually put about a million dollars back into the fund balance.

And part of that was ZARPA funding, we transferred about seven and a half million dollars into the general fund at the end of the year.

Um it all had to be, I guess we had to claim it by by the end of the calendar year, and so we did that.

Um, but essentially we we approved a 20 million dollar deficit, and the actual deficit was only about five to six million dollars.

Um, so there is that issue of budget to actual, and you know, we go through a whole budget fight, and then the actual spending can differ greatly from from what we proposed.

And one of the things that Mayor Walsh kind of prides himself on is being able to work effectively within a budget, even a budget with a significant deficit, and end up providing quality services without ever actually reaching that stated amount of a deficit.

And so um, you know, again, that was kind of the part of part of the debate in the dialogue is how quickly do we have to take action?

Thank you.

Amy Thornton from downtown Syracuse.

Thank you for being here tonight.

Um you mentioned the tax exempt status of the city properties.

Um 52% seems like a really kind of staggering uh number.

I think you know, for myself, I know you know, separation of church and state, so there's churches, um, it seems like the hospitals maybe and universities.

So my question is basically what qualifies um an entity as tax exempt?

Um and do you maybe personally feel like it's kind of uh too much, or are there the good and the bad and the ugly about that?

And so across all of our, you know, all of our call it areas, um, you know, the kind of the same rules apply because they're governed and dictated by New York State.

Um, you know, the big actors in the city, of course, are the university, um, you know, we've got student ESF, we've got SU, we've got Lemoyne College, um, the hospitals, we have a whole lot of state-owned property that is not in the tax rules.

Um, and truthfully, you know, that roughly 50-50 breakdown seems terrible.

And you know, if if you're in part of the 48% that are paying taxes on your property, it it's not great.

Um, but we're not that far out of line from other municipalities all throughout the country.

Um there's a lot of land that ends up being tax exempt.

But one of the you know, loopholes is that while you cannot tax these entities, there are fees that can be applied.

And so a tax and a fee are you know both ways to generate revenue, but in terms of you know, tax station policy and law, um, you know, you can you can hit them for one but not the other.

I don't know if you all want to listen aware of the fee structure.

Yeah, yeah, it depends on sorry, it does depend.

So the county, for example, your property tax obviously taxed.

So if you're a municipality, uh a hospital, those things obviously, you're off the tax rules and you don't receive property taxes.

But you would receive taxes for lighting districts, sewer districts, water districts, all of those type of things are you know still able to charge fees for those um properties.

Okay, so just a lot anyways.

Yeah, and it's it's funny because we talk about taxes and even your sewer, but it's there are small things that distinguish them between a fee and a tax and a levy and different things, and it does get very complicated.

Because it gets complicated to even talk to people about their property tax bills, because I know we struggle with that because you know the county has been very successful in the last couple of years reducing our tax bill.

But when you're a constituent in Liverpool or Clay or wherever you may be, or even in the city, your bill may not have gone down, and that could be a variety of reasons.

It could be, you know, the village, the town, the school district that you're in, um, and it you know, so or the sewer and all the different pieces.

So it is so many different things, or your assessment could have went up.

So there's so many different pieces to that.

Sorry, I got on a tangent.

No, and I wasn't levy and rate.

Well, levy and rate are different, but just here do you want to talk about that?

No.

No.

Yeah.

I know we certainly can't have somebody once, but I'm sorry.

No, that was great because I in my head I was like, you're charging fees to churches?

What is going on here?

Well, probably more.

No.

Um, yeah, so um one of the things with Liverpool is um schools are tax exempt, and I have a very well publicized issue with one of the schools in the village that is tax exempt.

For those of you that are living under a rock, it's Jeremy Gerlic and American High, where he's made 24 films, but he uses interns and then considers it as well.

So he does not pay taxes for that huge property in the village.

So since some of these entities are not taxed, you said that we or you can get funds by fees, like for sewers.

Like you pay a sewer fee.

So do we know what percentage?

Or you know, like say someone like Syracuse University, they're huge.

How much do we get from them in fees as opposed to I mean very so we in terms of our fee structure, we do not I think they're assessed over a billion dollars, and we surely don't get that back in the fees.

Um however, we do have what we call a shared service agreement with the university.

Um and that is negotiated by the chancellor and the mayor, and essentially it's uh a quasi pilot, um, where they give the city a chunk of money that goes straight into our general fund, and we're able to spend that how we please.

Um, you know, the university and the city we're linked, um, you know, can't be one without the other, and we need to we need to take care of each other.

And so as much as you know, we want to, you know, try to try to get more money out of them, you know, we also realize that in terms of major events and sales tax and a whole bunch of I mean they contribute a tremendous amount of vitality to our community.

Um where where I live in the neighborhood that I represent, I'm right kind of the other side of the university and you know, part of our our neighbors, it's the the town gun relationship, right?

And so we have the neighbors complaining about the university and the students and everything that they do and don't do, but in the end, the fact that the university is there is why we want to live in that neighborhood because it's got a whole lot of things going on.

Um our current shared service agreement has gone up every year.

Uh we're currently around three million dollars that they give us annually.

Um that will be renegotiated by Mayor Owens, I think this year coming up for the following year.

Erica Buchko, Village of Manoa.

I just have to say, Mayor Finney, I was in school district treasury for several years during COVID.

How do I miss that five and six percent interest rate that we were allowed to get on certain things?

Wonderful.

Um, but that's not my question.

My question is um when you guys were all talking about sales tax and how it's not like a huge part of the income that you receive.

It's not a lot of the revenue.

Um, but it is part of the revenue.

So how do you deal with um maybe um small businesses or companies or anyone that's like a cash operation that may not be giving you all of their tax money that they should be, or is it just that not as prevalent as I may think it is, and so it would be cost prohibitive to go after that money?

So the interesting thing is we talk about all our different layers of government.

The so the county, the city actually do not collect sales tax.

It's New York State that collects it and does anything like that, and then it gets funnel to the county first.

And then we have a sharing agreement with the city of a portion that they get.

So like you guys get, I think this year it's about 127 million.

The county has about 300,000.

So we have a sharing agreement, but it's actually the state that's responsible for collection.

But is there like a way that you like you know that this person's not paying their share?

That's I don't so that thing to that's also the funniest part is I don't get any information down to that individual level.

I get it by sector from the state, but there is a lot of information even at the county level, and it's one of the things that we have struggled with at times trying to forecast where we think sales tax is going to be in future years because the amount of information when things trend up and trend down and the way you get paid is typically there's around two payments a month, but they're reconciling one.

So sometimes we'll get a reconciliation where all of us on this payment may be down several million, but it's really from the past quarter's reconciliation, and trying to get more information on that from the state at times can be difficult, but there's only certain subsets of data that get shared.

So I could not tell you anybody in Onadaga County what that specific vendor remitted in terms of sales tax.

Then by the time it gets to us, it's even more different.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, I can tell you about a situation that we dealt with in the village of Liverpool.

We had um an illegal weed shop.

Um weed shops are not legal in the village of Liverpool, THC opened, they're all throughout the city of Syracuse and other areas.

And shutting the well, I thought it would be just a simple thing.

You're illegal, let's shut you down, no big deal.

But because they were a cash business and only cash, it became a I don't review.

And it took forever.

And um it was a major, major production that happened during a concert in the park right next to it.

Two shops for one.

Yeah.

Of course.

Uh Rob Robbins, Fabius.

Um, I just wonder if you guys could speak to the aquarium.

I know there's a lot of misinformation going out there about it's just taxpayers' dollars going to it, and then there's obviously information that's like it's COVID money.

And now with the cost of things going up, where's that money gonna come from to finish this?

I personally think it's a good idea.

I think we need tourism back here in Syracuse.

It's good revenue for the community.

Um, but could you guys speak to that a little bit?

Certainly, I can.

Um, so it's a county project.

Um there was ARPA funding that was put toward it in total between ARPA funding and other county dollars.

The legislature approved 85 million dollars and 85 million only.

Um, in terms of that since then there has been private funding and donations um to fill that gap.

Um we're getting very close on filling that gap.

Um, but that's kind of the funding structure of it.

So some of it was local county dollars, and I honestly do not remember off the top of my head, I could get the information.

And then there was a portion of local dollars that were appropriate to get you to that $85 million that you often see in the papers.

It is on schedule to open in July of 2026.

That is going out to get donations and private funding to close analyze that gap to make sure that that opens in July of 2026.

And kind of the average citizen has a tough time with that intellectually, and they believe that it's a city funded project.

And so if you go down the you know social media feeds about the aquarium, often it's the city spending money, and and there is a misunderstanding in the community that it's county money being spent within the city.

Yep.

And obviously the goal is to drive more economic development and different things down in the inner harbor.

Um so yes, but that's where the money came from is uh a portion of it from ARPA, portion of it from local, and the rest is private funding and donations.

That's a very large portion of our budget.

No, because you're in the state retirement system, the counties have to pay a portion into the pension fund and different things.

So no now, could it be reduced potentially?

And that's where you talk about the whole state retirement system and your tiers and what the benefits are for retirees, and that has changed over the years, even you know, down to what age you can retire at and things like that.

So obviously it's it is a balancing act, but we could not just say we're done contributing.

And it's not something that we can reduce, that's kind of a tier, like you know, we I think you might have heard fixed tier six.

Um, that's that's one of the issues is the retirement age and yeah, so the tiers lock in most of the time your age, your contribute contribution percent as an individual when you retire.

Um the health benefits are outside of the state, that's down to the local municipality.

I was trying to think what else I'm missing something.

When when we talk about our budgets, uh you know, the $350 million city budget gets broken down between discretionary and non-discretionary.

Um, so there are things that we have to pay no matter what, and then we have a much smaller amount that we can choose where it goes to.

And for all of us, the health care benefits, you know, all those learned long-term costs, we have to pay them no matter what.

And so that gets put in the non-discretionary category.

I cannot claim to be an expert on the financial side of the school district.

Um, you know, what I do know is that the state has what they call a maintenance of effort, given and given that they're never going to reduce funding for a school.

And so if it jumps from you know 1.5 to 1.75 million dollars, and I'm just throwing a number out there very, very low.

Um, they won't drop it back down.

Um I guess they'll leave it there.

In terms of the you know, closing of buildings and you know, the possibility of you know dispossessing an asset for whatever reason, um, that would go through us, that would go through our commissioner of assessment, and we're actually doing that with the Sydney Johnson Vocational Center.

I guess where are we downtown?

Um, which is over yep, over that way.

And we put out a request for proposals and I think we selected one.

I don't know.

I think the I think that we selected a proposal that will be um some type of housing project right down, you know, where where we assume the community grid will end up being.

Um but you know that is within within our ability and within our right.

Um we do keep buildings that don't have students in them.

Um one of them is Elmwood down on the south side, and we use that for a lot of our adults, um kind of additional office space.

Then we've got Shea and Levy, um Levy over on the east side, Shea on the west side, and what we do is we will shift a building.

Um, for example, if Clary, who's gonna get renovated, they would spend a year or two in a different building to allow for the renovations, and then after renovations were done, they would leave you know what we call that swing space.

And so um there is benefit to retaining the assets, even though they may not be you know directly contributing to the tax rules or they could have a different vision for a neighborhood, but um, even our closed buildings do get used.

That that 20% might give a little breathing room, so yeah.

Same, by the way.

Oh, please.

Yeah, we could ask another question too.

Hi, I'm Anisa.

Um live in the Strathmore neighborhood of the city.

I am just curious for each one of your spaces.

What have you noticed is driving the most revenue outside of grants and state funding, federal funding, and things like that.

So for the county, it's definitely sales tax.

There's absolutely no doubt about it.

Besides state and federal reimbursement, that is our one of our largest funding sources.

And as I mentioned, property taxes for us, um, you know, we all had an unexpected windfall of sales tax a couple years ago.

Um, in the COVID era, we kind of didn't really know where where it was gonna go, and we wound up getting a whole bunch more money from sales tax than we thought we were going to.

Um that trend is starting to reverse itself.

Um, you know, as we yeah, we saw on precedent levels at like six and six point seven percent growth, five percent growth, um, where the county ended 2024 um at just a little over one percent growth.

So we're definitely seeing it come back to historical norms of what we expect from sales tax.

And then, you know, given that we do have a historically large fund balance of you know 100 million dollars plus um our our investments have been paying paying off pretty well.

Um about two years ago we retained uh a firm to kind of manage our investments, and I forget we paid them a couple hundred thousand dollars and got about ten million dollars in additional revenue from that.

Um you know, you look you look over the city and there's a whole lot of little things.

Um, we could probably save a couple hundred grand here, a couple hundred grand there, a couple hundred grand there.

Um and we we tend to want to go after these big numbers, you know, millions and millions of dollars.

Um, but I'm part of a I forget what we actually call it, um, you know, some type of revenue enhancement group that we're looking at some of those smaller and mid-level opportunities to recoup some funds.

And you know, I think that when we're when we're looking at the financial situation that we are, we really have to be going after everything that we can.

Yeah, and I think that's a great point about um investments.

So the county through COVID, a lot of um governmental agencies have more fund balance and cash on hand than they've had before.

Um, and so we really have been spending a lot of time investing that.

So county similarly the last couple years has for the first time in probably history has been able to actually use our interest on investments uh to fund the government portions, obviously, a small portion, but beforehand that really wasn't an option that you needed the cash on hand to pay the bills where we're able to invest some of it now in the county, and similar to the city, you know, like our health department, there are a lot of different fees there for permit fees for health inspections, weights and measures, your parks fees.

So there are other areas of revenue, um, just in terms of the totality of the size of our budget, they're not the largest ones, but there are certainly for a lot of our different departments, whether it be DOT or whatever, there are fees as well that they collect um county clerk um things like that, where we do receive in funding to support those departments.

Um our greatest source of revenue is definitely property tax.

So villages are well, those taxes on your home.

Like to offer a friendly reminder to slow down in a speed zone.

Oh, yes.

By the way, we do not get that much money from that because um that is not a local law, that is a but we do get um a decent amount from drive driving trucks through.

So yeah.

My wife, we got our our first household warning last night in the mail.

It was my wife, not me.

Sure.

Yeah.

Okay, so I I live in the town of Anadaga.

How does my taxes roll up to the county?

Excuse me if I'm not looking at my tax bill, but of course I give my the tax bill is the hardest thing to explain for somebody.

So on yours, you would have the county tax rate um portion, and part of it also depends on which is hard because we just talked about the county reduce the tax rate to 293.

If don't quote me on that number right now, but you that would be per um, but that depends on if your town is at equalization rate at 100% too.

So that's there's so many components that go into it.

So part of your bill is the county property tax, part of it would be the town tax rate.

But then, as we talked about, you will also see potentially a sewer fee, a lighting district, um, trash removal if your town does that for you.

And those, although they're on your property tax bills, aren't necessarily that's where we talk about are considered fees, not necessarily taxes, even though it's on your county property tax bill.

Um, so it makes it very, very difficult to try to explain that to everybody because I do it on my own bill.

I'm like, okay, I you know, I'm in charge of finance, I should be able to go through my own bill, and I'm like, oh, wait, I live in Clay, they're not at 100% equalization.

So then it's this factor times that plus the county rate gets you your bill, and it's like so I would have to go what to my town to find out if we're at the hundred percent of the equalization.

Yeah, you can find it, and it's actually I believe on uh the county website, and I know it's in our county book.

Like I could certainly I can leave you my card.

I could certainly tell you what you're at and different things like that.

And you know, always in my department of real property tax, if you have questions about your bill and different things, we're happy to try to walk you through it.

And there is a little cheat sheet, and I can send that afterwards that's in our budget book that kind of walks it down step by step in terms of those different pieces of the county tax.

So when I pay my school taxes and then my property taxes, am I the school is there a component within the school district too that rolls up to the county only the property and only the property?

Once it comes in January, have your county and town only the ones that are in September are completely 100% school district.

Okay.

The county and towns do not get any funding out of that component.

So anything like that is just the school taxes.

So is the rate determined on the size of the town?

So the rate is actually, and this is where we talk about the levy.

So when we get to, we talked about putting all the budget together, 1.6 billion dollars.

Let's just say, you know, we had 1.3, so we need to get 300 million dollars from our property tax.

Let's just use a round number there.

So we can do a levy of 300 million dollars.

Now that then gets spread based on the assessment in each one of the towns.

So the city may pay a, and I'm just using because I don't know what they are off the top of my mind, the city might be responsible for only 30% of that 30 million because the total assessed value across the county gets split based on what the total county assessed value of homes are in the county.

So each municipality then gets what their share of that 300 million that we're talking about is, and then you get the county tax rate at 293 per thousand dollars of your home.

So it's based on per thousand.

And then you get the town one, and then if you're in a village, you may have a village one as well.

And then we talk about that would be per thousand, but your town may not be what we we say 100%, so that equals 1,000 times the 293 to get you to your rate.

You might be at 80%, so then we have to factor that up to get you to the 100% to apply that, so you won't see the 293 on your bill.

That's what I'm saying.

My biggest thing that I hate talking, not hate talking about it, because it's not a simple, it's not simple, and because we're not equalized across the county, it makes it even harder to explain it to constituents because it's an if-then statement that drives me bananas.

Well, at least I got a better understanding now than I did when I first walked in.

But I'm glad.

I'm glad.

Are you just I love that people part?

I'm just kidding.

I was like, What are they sending from question every time I do this panel?

I'm like, oh, that's I mean, I should say you know I love a Marcellus.

Uh my question has to do with um auditing and fraud.

How do you in within your areas uh make sure the auditing is happening correctly, the funds are getting spent on what there's getting spent on, and then guarding against fraud.

The funds are getting spent on what there's getting spent on, and then guarding against fraud.

Um, so in terms of auditing from our perspective, like I said, we do have another arm that does the auditing of programs and stuff like that.

But we um in the county actually track our expenses down to very detailed levels.

So our budget rolls up into what we call line items or parent accounts like supplies, but then with under under supplies, there might be, you know, office supplies, furniture, all these other different things, and then even below that, we track down to like paper.

We have what's called a supporting detail.

So we are constantly in real time of looking at that to see what the trend is.

And every order, anything that a department hat wants to buy has to come in and be approved by obviously the department head or someone that is authorized there.

It then comes into my shop and financial operations to say, okay, was this part of the plan?

And if it's not, what are we not gonna spend so that we don't get ourselves in hot water?

Um, and then it actually goes to our controller's office, which is more auditing arm to say, is this being charged to the right account?

Can this be bought with these types of funds depending on what fund it is?

So we have a whole procurement process that prevents um anything like that.

Um, and then in terms of fraud, and same thing on the voucher side, it goes through many levels to make sure everything's matched up.

Um, our biggest I and I think probably a lot of governments, our biggest um thing right now is fraud really is on some of the banking um side and you know, people trying to get county checks and then trying to cash those that are fraudulent and not truly county checks.

And the other thing that we've run into is people calling in to try to, you know, might be a vendor we work with all the time, they want to change their banking information or where the check gets mailed.

So we have an authentication process where we have to, you know, we call a trusted source and verify everything.

But that's one of the newest things in the last several years is really that fraud on the check side and the banking side, and then even trying to fictitiously to change um vendor accounts, so checks that should be going to our vendors that are providing work go somewhere else.

So that's something that we spend a lot of time um on in our shop.

So did I answer all of those pieces?

Okay.

So on the village side, it is, you know, again, a microcosm of everything that the county does.

We we put out, you know, what we have spent throughout that month.

It's a public document that anybody can look at.

The board reviews it, the citizens can review it.

We have one citizen in particular that goes through it with a fine-tooth cone and once questioned us about a $14 Amazon purchase in a very aggressive manner, and we had to give her proof that I purchased a cell phone cover for my phone from Amazon.

And to be clear, everyone.

And by the way, my mayoral phone, not my personal phone, by the way.

Every jurisdiction has that person.

Yes.

Without a doubt, there is someone wherever you live that promised you is going through every single document that is produced by the government and will find that $14 phone case.

Um and correct the minutes.

I believe I said the word the, not that.

I yeah.

I I can I can picture her in my head at this moment.

Just wanted to ask a little bit more about the fees.

Um I was living in an apartment complex for this, and they just killed me with fees from my security deposits, so that was fun.

And I understand the importance of collecting fees because we can't collect taxes from tax exempt facilities uh, you know, businesses and whatnot, um, institutions.

Um is there a cap on what fees you can charge individuals?

Like, I don't know if some of the other day was like, why am I paying a fee just to pay my trash bill, right?

And it's like, well, I'm already paying taxes.

Why do I have to do that?

So is there a cap because there's a cap on what we're charged in taxes?

Is there a cap on the amount you can charge in fees?

Oh yes, no, and in between.

Um so a lot of the fees are dictated by state law too.

So and a lot of them, yes, there is a cap.

It is dictated by state law um in terms of what you can charge for certain things, especially in the health arena, let's say.

Um, the other thing is some of them they're no, we review what the cost to provide those services for permits and stuff, but for the county, all of our fees are local loss, so they have to go through the legislature to be approved.

So every year when we do the budget process, if there are fees that we want to change, it goes through that legislative process to be reviewed, and obviously during those time periods we're talking about why we're changing this fee and giving the justification for it and different things.

So on some of them there is no statutory cap per se, but it is reviewed through both obviously the executive branch and then the legislative branch to say, okay, why are we increasing this fee?

Um, and most of the time it's really to it's the cost to actually provide service um with that.

The county, I would have say the county and probably the city, and none of us are you know bankrolling any of our governments on the fees that we charge by any means.

I mean it's such a small portion of our budget.

I mean, yeah, so yes, there are some caps based on statutory things, other ones there aren't caps necessarily, but it's reviewed and awfully brought back down to what is the cost to provide that service to the best of our ability.

And you can't you can't increase them egregiously, you know.

Um we were just recently reviewing um fees with our codes department, and I think there was some fee that hadn't changed since like 1982.

And we looked at the possibility of doubling it, where we we realized that that just would not look good, even though it truly has not changed in 40 years, over 40 years.

And so it you've got to be mindful of that, but it's yeah.

And ours was a um we offer garbage service with stickers, which is very controversial, ironically enough, until I understood it, and it's because senior citizens don't throw out a lot of garbage, so they can do they could pay like literally a dollar a week for garbage service, which is nothing.

Um we have two people who are using an outside service for trash, but then our village has also outlawed trucks, so then it's problematic and the way and they refuse to not do it, so then we're going after the garbage service, and then we have a fee that we've never charged since 1982.

And suddenly we're like, how do we how do we create this fee to get them to stop coming in to get this one person's garbage?

And Christy, correct me if I'm wrong.

Fees are are typically associated with a particular uh cost or expense.

Um, and if the fee vastly exceeds the cost, then it gets into the tax territory, and then it would end up being illegal.

Um and many of our fees go up, um, but they don't all go up.

We just passed again, kind of the legislature is the one that establishes fee rates.

Um in the city, we have what we call improved and unimproved streets.

Um if you have a curb, it's called improved.

If you don't, it is unimproved.

And the way that you need to maintain the different types of roads, different.

The unimproved, we we oil, we put a slurry down over them every couple of years.

And the cost of that dropped significantly unexpectedly.

Um we actually reduced that particular fee because again, a fee is often tied to a particular use.

Okay, never mind.

We're not gonna we're not even uh you guys have all kind of mentioned the importance of property tax uh as a portion of the budget.

I know Chris mentioned that at least some towns don't get access to sales tax revenues, and so property tax really is the crucial component.

All towns, all towns, okay.

And only the city who gets a share of cities, school districts, and there are some other little components.

Um, but yes, the major the bulk of it is just the county and the city.

You're absolutely correct.

There's no I guess you know, Onondaga County real estate values have increased probably as much as anywhere in the country over the past couple years.

Um I imagine the assessed property values have not kept up with that piece.

Would reassessments sort of help balance that budget?

I know it would anger a lot of homeowners, but it goes back to the levy.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, go ahead.

Please please take it.

Um so assessed values actually have gone up significantly over the last couple years, surprisingly, but they're not equal across the county.

You're correct.

Some towns, you know, reassess every year, some have not done it in multiple years.

I know within the city there's been an effort to do it, but different, so they do get left behind.

So the assessed values certainly are a component of it.

Um there's a couple components to the levy and the property tax too.

There is a tax cap in New York state um in terms of percentage growth over year over year that you can increase your tax with.

There are potential waivers and other calculations in it, but you can we couldn't just you know raise our tax levy by 15%.

That's not allowed.

There is a cap in terms of what can be done in New York State and a formula to do that to prevent some of those huge swings.

So that's also some of the things that get thought about through the budget process too, in terms of your tax rate and what we could potentially raise the levy should we need those funds on.

So there's all sorts of implements that go into that as well.

And you know, we were talking about and we continue to have conversations around a citywide rebail.

And if our levy didn't change, but we reevaluated the entire city, um, your effective tax rate would actually decrease because we wouldn't be changing the levy.

The levy is ultimately how much money we have to collect.

Um it's it's really really complicated and complex.

And I would say I don't even have a great grasp on it, to tell you the truth.

Yeah, so the levy, when we talk about levy, we're talking about the total dollar amount.

So for Onadaga County, I think it's 146 million.

Don't again, don't quote me on the exact numbers right at the moment.

But that comes down into all of the different assessment rates, and let's just say an assessment was off somewhere along the way, or property community.

We can't change the total amount, so we could never collect more than that levy amount.

So that actually changes the rate, and the rate doesn't usually change on property taxes very much in terms of different things from what's adopted, but that levy we could never collect more than that, so it caps us on that total dollar amount we can collect.

Um, but then we talk a lot about the rate because that's what people actually see on their tax bills and stuff.

So yes, property taxes and property tax law and all those pieces are very convoluted at best.

Did that answer that?

I'm sorry, it was kind of peace me.

Yeah, and and and Chrissy had mentioned, you know, those, you know, some are full assessed value and some some areas are not, and then school districts will have different areas with different assess values too.

So that's also um that's where different municipalities can see swings in their tax rate each year because if somebody does a huge reassessment and their assessed value goes up significantly, they then take a bigger portion of the tax because it's spread based on the assessed value.

Um, so that's where change, you know, one town from another may go up or down significantly in a year, depending on what the assessed values have done across the entire town.

So I've got a question, if you stick with me for a minute.

Absolutely.

We just suffered through a hundred percent reassessment to get to full value when over the course of about 15 years, our equalization rate had dropped, it had been staying steady in the 90s and it dropped to 58.

That's when we started going forward with the reassessment, and it fell below 50% by the time we started after we did the inventory to be able to go out and reassess it.

So we spent time explaining that the levy is the pizza.

You've got this big pizza, right?

And all you're doing when you do the reassessment is you're changing the size of the pizza slices.

There is no relationship to the statement that one of our major print media keeps saying is that when your assessment goes up, your taxes go up.

So I can certify that in the town of Scaniatlas, one third of our residents or run one-third of our property owners saw an increase to taxes, one third saw a decrease to taxes, and one third are right in the middle, plus or minus $500.

So to try to prove the point, we kept our tax cap um not only below 2% on a on our budget, we only went up 0.014 over last year's levy.

So it's simple for us to say, no, your tax rate um changed because your assessed value is twice what it was, now your tax rate has flipped, exactly as Corey explained.

But Mike, um and to answer a little bit Cynthia's question, ongov has a site for property.

Um you just go to um click on ongov, and you'll be able to find your exact bill, and it has on it the equalization rate for your town.

And I'm not gonna name towns, but there's some that are at single digits, um, which raises a lot of questions, right?

So my question is maybe more for you, Christy, because I don't know if it applies to the others, but there are many unfunded mandates that come down, and they come, say, for example, with Medicaid from the state.

And just if you could talk about a bit how that gets handled as it comes in, and it probably goes straight to what Corey described before as I've got discretionary and I've got mandatory, and I can't do anything about mandatory except pay that bill.

Yeah.

Yeah, so there are a lot of different mandates.

So the county um for the entire county, and I think sometimes this is even a confusion, is a lot of our social service programs, so Medicaid, foster care, day care, heap, um, temporary assistance are all done through the county.

Now they're state mandated programs and there are state and federal funding behind them, but the balance of that then gets put on the county.

So it's not like in a lot of most of them there's not anything to turn away.

And similar to indigent defense, the state a couple years ago increased the rate by I think it was close to sixty dollars an hour for attorney costs.

But because it's a mandated services they increased it and I'm not saying that they weren't justified the rate but because they did it so much in one year that cost us the county probably five million dollars that we were not anticipating.

Similarly with a state intercepted enhanced federal Medicaid share where the federal has a share of the state's supposed to have a share and then the counties have a share.

And the state intercepted that saying based on their proportions so that was another $10 million hit, I think it was roughly a few years ago.

We're now at our cap at about a hundred and five million dollars a year that goes to the Medicaid program for the county.

So there's a lot of one of the things that is always concerning to me at the county level is as the state gets in financial trouble the go to is always to push more costs down to the counties and local municipalities and what's going on in the federal and state level especially with Medicaid that is a huge concern for me for the county is we have a Medicaid cap right now a hard cap that we're not supposed to have to put in anymore but that can be reopened.

And so for me depending on how things go, that's one of my biggest concerns.

Another thing even is out of the federal level is the SNAP program.

It used to be a 50% share federal, 50% local now it's going to be 75% local, 25% federal that's a three million dollar cost to the county each year.

So these programs you know certainly are needed but a lot of them we have very little discretion in where I know our county administrative team has had conversations is not that we don't want the program but we also have no to say in the regulations on the programs either.

So there are different components that you know we'd like to be brought to the table more and have a conversation about that in ways that you know we can balance those the fund and the need in the community but there are a lot of programs like that that are you know state and federally mandated but the county has to pick up the further than a certain share of the county has to pick up the rest one minute takeaway and take as many minutes as you like.

But sometimes it can be really hard for just the average citizen with like no math skills to figure out their role and especially because it's so different with the county city village or or even town so can you kind of inspire us what can we do as citizens like what is our role aside from reading the budget knowing when it is or maybe attending a hearing start um you know I I think as as citizens I think we have been trained to be anti-tax where your taxes do actually go to fund wonderful services.

You know they they go to maintain your schools your roads your community um your DPW your trash collection your your parks um taxes are not the evil thing that so many Americans feel that they are that is my I think from my perspective as a legislator hearing the voice of the public is actually really important.

When when I took on the role two years ago I made up all these stories of what people were going to call me over and the the issues that they were going to have and this and that.

I get more phone calls about traffic calming and speed control than any other topic in the city kind of universally people want cars driving slower.

People want more pedestrian friendly neighborhoods and routes and so when I look at that budget um I'm much more partial to you know to put some extra money into that we also have in our city budget we call special objects of expense that are kind of like standalone projects at the end of the budget.

But you know, we can kind of earmark funds for particular projects in that regard.

And so, you know, speak up, let your voice be heard.

And also every year we have a budget hearing or I guess uh uh um public hearing on our budget, and nobody ever shows.

Um I encourage you to get out and take the opportunities, the formal opportunities to address your whether it be your executive or your legislative branch, um, you know, let people know what you want.

And I think what I want to kind of where I want to go to in the city, and I think that it would be a really great tool, you know, for every jurisdiction kind of throughout the county, um, is some type of actual citizen engagement, the public budgeting activity.

No, no, no, no.

It's uh I forget the term.

Um, but pretty much it's it's uh an effort undertaken by the government to say, you know, here is our pot of discretionary funds.

Where are your priorities?

And then we can kind of help slice that pie based upon the priorities we hear from the public rather than just you know what happens in City Hall.

Um it's a fun activity where they they constrain you.

You know, they say you've got 20 million dollars to spend.

Do you want to spend you know 18 million dollars on fire?

Well, if you do that, then you can't spend any more on recreation.

And if you want to spend five on recreation, then you got 15 you can give to DPW and you can give over here.

And so it kind of allows for people to establish their priorities.

Um participatory budget budgeting.

That's what it is.

Yep.

And there are different, you know, different programs and apps that you can do.

Um, but I'm gonna talk to the deputy mayor, our our mayor elect to see if you know, maybe not this year, but maybe in year and subsequent years if we can undertake a project like that.

In the village we have people show up for the budget hearing and voice through concerns.

Yeah, so I obviously I certainly think you know, educating yourself um on the budget document is a good place to start to also even understand the departments.

Um certainly encouraged to come to committee meetings.

Um, you know, we have the legislative committee meetings every month, and some of them are just informational, especially this time of the year, the ledge brings in departments to just talk about what's going on in the next couple of years.

Sometimes those aren't reasonable because they're through during working hours too.

So I certainly understand access to things too.

But if you are passionate or interested, or even are concerns and questions about certain functions of county government, um, I think reach most every one of our departments has a page where you can reach out to them via email in terms of asking questions.

Um a lot of them do different, you know, outreach efforts within the community.

But I think if there's really something that you are most interested about, and it doesn't have to be on the positive side, it can also be something you have a great concern about, um, starting with the department, I think is always the best piece.

Um, and then kind of following that through the legislative process because sometimes, you know, starting with a big budget book of one point, it's just kind of overwhelming.

But if there are areas that you have interest in, you know, and a lot of our departments, especially in our human services are looking for community feedback and community engagement and would love to partner with constituents to make sure, you know, our education efforts, whether it be about you know nutrition or whatever it may be, are getting out to folks.

So most departments are very open to those conversations and trying to provide the information that you're looking for, um, like I have something on the line.

I have idea of that.

The idea of getting having that five.

Opportunity and access are different.

Everybody doesn't have to be followed.

So have you received feedback if you're not gonna have to baseline all the time to be like I have no idea what they're doing.

Oh wow, this is actually wildly funny.

I'm just learning it.

I'm not gonna find my age, but also I have a very adult children, and I'm just learning something.

So I was thinking that off of it.

Thank you for that.

Yeah.

I in the village of Liverpool, we have public um comment and communication that comes in, and we talk about that at every board meeting.

So we have a very big senior population, so I will get um handwritten note cards in cursive about recycling bids and mailed to me, you know.

And it's and it's it's very adorable, but we will literally read that.

Um but I I will say that the one huge bonus to COVID was we can now use Zoom for our board meetings.

Um I did lose the battle to keep it recorded.

Our board decided to not record it and keep it for prosperity.

Um you know, there are also the websites, um many municipalities are now required to improve their websites to keep them up to date and um you know, with all of that information on them that is accessible, and then also a link to basically reach out to your elected officials.

And and we do genuinely and sincerely read this and take it into account, even from the Snoky people.

You're right.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All things happen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not what you want.

He's extremely uncomfortable with you.

So that's what I mean.

That's why I said everybody was doing much people.

And I'm not saying not that bad.

I think that have to have different actions.

I don't know if I have a different action link.

Well, my mother-in-law um didn't even have an email address.

And I remember when she had to buy her car, it all had to go through me because my husband was like, I've had it.

My mother-in-law.

Um, but that is but that is also why I get so many handwritten.

Which not gonna lie, I I wish everyone did that.

It's much nicer than that.

And I can recurse it because I'm old.

Embrace your age, by the way.

Well, thank you, I'll have a round of applause.

Take a seat here for a second.

All right.

We will have four special table presenters joining us to celebrate your milestone.

And uh past graduates have wondered what's next.

Now we're done with our classes.

These special presenters will set up tables for you to explore, some opportunities to meet face to face with representatives who offer programs that you might like to participate in, services that you might like to take advantage of.

Please don't be shy.

Please walk up to them and interact with them because they are attending for you.

Our last cohort was very shy, and they would not walk up to them.

So I told them I'll give these guys a heads up.

You can look forward to a delicious hot meal provided by Francescas.

Yes.

Very nice.

Thank you, Mayor Stacy.

You uh we will also be photographing you as you receive your graduation certificate.

You do not have to dress up formally, but I do encourage you to wear something that makes you feel super great.

I will upload our session packet tomorrow and I will send you an email.

As always, please leave your name tags and take the food home.

Bye.

Hey, now you got to be able to do that.