Syracuse City Council Budget Hearing: Office of Management and Budget - April 13, 2026
Syracuse City Council Budget Hearing: Office of Management and Budget - April 13, 2026
On April 13, 2026, the Syracuse City Council held a budget hearing for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Budget Director Evan Loving and his team presented the office's budget, procurement updates, and equity compliance initiatives. The discussion focused on budget process improvements, procurement reforms, and staffing priorities.
Discussion Items
- Budget Overview: Director Loving presented the OMB budget, noting that most changes are year-over-year due to personnel shifts. One employee moved from the SURA fund to the general fund, and contractual services on SURA were zeroed out. All positions except one vacancy in equity compliance are filled.
- Budget Process Priorities: Loving outlined goals for a year-long budget process starting July 2026, improving the budget book's usability, taking a fresh look at the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), and enhancing revenue forecasting and projections.
- Procurement and Purchasing: The division is working on new guidance for waivers of RFPs and bids, finalizing a Bloomberg procurement transformation grant ($400,000 remaining) before it ends in September 2026, re-evaluating the Interlocal Agreement (IMA) with the county (currently expired), and aligning procurement with the school district. Councilor Moore suggested centralized office supply purchasing to save money.
- OpenGov and Savings: Councilors discussed measuring success of OpenGov, noting increased vendor participation but lack of a formal evaluation framework. Sheryl Pace (Assistant Director of Equity Compliance) explained that while subcontracting by MWBEs has increased, fewer respond as primes due to bonding, insurance, and access to capital barriers. Efforts include unbundling contracts, education, and proactive outreach.
- Equity Compliance and Social Impact: The division has one vacancy. Loving emphasized defining "social impact" and integrating equity goals into procurement processes, such as waivers. Councilor Nave asked about the "social impact analyst" role, which is still being refined.
- Staffing and Training: Loving stressed cross-training and succession planning to avoid single points of failure, and plans for citywide training on budget, procurement, and equity compliance.
Key Outcomes
- No votes or formal decisions were taken. The hearing was informational, with OMB outlining priorities for the upcoming fiscal year.
- Councilors expressed support for OMB's proposed reforms and requested continued evaluation of procurement outcomes, especially for MWBE participation.
- The next hearing was scheduled for the following morning with the Auditor.
Meeting Transcript
Thank you, Nator. All right, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back. Um, we are shifting to the office of management budget. I'm joined this afternoon by President Hudson, President Pardon me, Counselor Hudson. Um, Councillor Henrik, Councillor Moore, Councillor Nave, President Paniagua, um, Councillor Jones Router, and Director Evan Loving, um, and the entire budget team. Thank you all for being here. Um, so Evan, you have a game plan, you can jump right in. Sure. Thank you, counselors. Um, I'm Evan Loving on the budget director. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk about our office budget. Obviously, we spend a lot of time talking about the overall budget, which is very important. Um, and I would like to take a minute to thank my team who is responsible for the budget coming together so well this year. Um I also want to talk a little bit about our other two divisions. Um, so I want to thank Sheryl Pace, our assistant director for equity compliance for being here, and Laura Padget, our assistant director for uh procurement and purchase. I'm gonna go through the numbers for our office budgets real briefly, and then I want to talk a little bit about some of the priorities that we have for the next year or so. Uh we are paper and people, like many of the offices, so you'll see very few changes year over year. Um, probably the largest change on the on the budget side is that one employee is moving off of Sura. Um, so you will see that change and purchase and equity compliance are essentially flat. We start on page 73, and it's what's the rationale for the shift from Surah to the general fund or so that's the fund? We generally, at least I generally try and take a look at to see that to me that the baseline is that people are not on Sura, and there should be a rationale for someone to be on Sura. In this case, I didn't feel like there was, and so it seemed like a re to me there's reason to move them back. Perfect. Um questions, like I said, the numbers are relatively flat, but was there anything as y'all look through that you were concerned or had a question about on the numbers before I talk a little bit about priorities? All the positions are field. We currently have one vacancy and equity compliance. Which one? In uh in the division of equity compliance, there's a vacancy. So we have right now the division has an assistant director, and we have one vacancy. But all our other positions are filled. Kevin, question for you. So out of title pay asked you, did you zero that out? But then when you go to contract this services, that was 11,000. So it has zero. So there's what are you doing with that? Are you on page 74? 74. So contractual services would have been somewhat on Sura, but they're not on Sura anymore. Oh, okay. So it's zero. So, how how many people were that that was on a server? Sir, was just one person who one person for one eleven? The and fringe benefits. That's the total cost. Okay. Yep. And we don't expect any special grants coming through an SL 70. We don't we don't have anything on the horizon. I'm gonna talk when I talk about procurement.
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