At the informal meeting of the Common Council last night, city treasurer Heather Campbell mentioned that department budget requests were due on September 10. That's tomorrow, and it marks the beginning of the process that produces the city budget for the following year.
In last year's budget process, it was revealed there was a gap of $1 million between projected expenditures and anticipated revenue, which was being closed by raising taxes 1.5 percent and taking $800,000 from the fund balance, the City's "rainy day fund." We also learned that balancing the budget by taking from the fund balance had been going on for the past several years, a practice that Councilmember Margaret Morris (First Ward), now the Council president presumptive, declared "unsustainable."
There is no question that we need the Greenport Rescue Squad and that they provide an invaluable service. One wonders, however, why the lion's share of the increased funding they are seeking must come from Hudson. The proposed increases for the other municipalities range from $7,000 (Stockport) to $12,000 (Claverack). The increase being sought from Hudson is more than five times more than the increases sought from the other four municipalities combined.
Erratum: A reader pointed out an error in the table above, which came from page 13 of the GRS document. The sum of the amounts proposed for 2026 (the green column) is $495,020 not $457,220. The sum of the total for 2025 (salmon column) and the total increases requested (blue column) is also $495,020.
The table below (click to enlarge) shows the contributions made by the five municipalities from 2017 to 2025. Over that period, the contribution from Ghent increased from $30,285 to $38,350, and that from Stockport increased from $18,428 to $30,520. Contributions from Claverack, Greenport, and Hudson remained the same at $60,000, $50,000, and $75,000 respectively, except in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, when Hudson contributed an extra $5,000 for a total of $80,000.
Needless to say, there were questions from members of the Common Council relating to why the increase being sought from Hudson is so much greater than that being asked of the other municipalities.
The document presented to the Council last night can be found here.
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Even more shocking is that when the council asked the reason for the the massively unequal distribution the representative from Greenport EMS had no answer at all. He could not give a reason. There is no formula. They literally just pulled it out of thin air. It’s not based on population, taxable value, or call volume. They literally just said, “they’re rich, they can pay it!” They city got a taste of its own medicine and got “Welcome Stranger’d” by EMS. Well, hate to break it to to you. Hudson is poor. Some of its residents may be well off, but probably even less so than any of the other municipalities. But the city is broke!
ReplyDeleteThere is no disaggregation of the number of calls the GRS receives each year. Just that they responded to 6300+ in the last year across 5 municipalities. There's 100+ pages of mind-numbing statistics and numbers but nothing at all -- clearly or even tangential that I can find -- that argues why the City should agree to a 367% increase in the levy when the other municipalities are looking at 20% increases.
ReplyDeleteSeems like there's plenty here for the council to unpack, and a lot of explaining to do on the GRS's part.
They said that 50% of their calls originated in Hudson. Then they said that includes picking up people from the hospital to take them to Albany Medical or a nursing home, etc. So much of the calls being assigned to Hudson aren’t necessarily for Hudson residents. And even if it were and they based the money requested on volume, it would still be nowhere near as unequal as it is proposed.
DeleteIt was also interesting to hear that there is nearly $750,000 in unpaid parking tickets out there and the city will be hiring a collection agency (or already has) to get some of the worst scoffs to pay up. How much will that assistance cost us?
ReplyDeleteTo think that the head of our law enforcement department, acting HPD Chief David Miller, was answering questions from the council about the missing parking revenue is frightening. He tried his best to assure the council that the issue would get more attention. He didn't say who at HPD would be handling the problem or if it would interfere with law enforcement and responding to basic quality of life issues that are so common in Hudson. Our police chief is spending time on parking matters while speeding and noisy vehicles on upper State Street seem to worsen by the day. This is no way to run a city, and it should come as no surprise if taxes need to be raised next year as well.
We just created a Parking Bureau, why isn't the head of that department giving monthly report to the council and explaining how at least some of that $750,000 in unpaid tickets will be collected? Because the Chief of Police has plenty of time and resources to take care of the Parking Bureau's problem? Did Miller and Mishanda Franklin graduate from the police academy with the hope of collecting unpaid parking tickets in Hudson? That's what they're paid over $100,000 a year to do for us while kids are holding up delivery drivers? And the kiosks? Who will get all 16 of them out of storage and in the ground and turned on sometime soon to START INCREASING PARKING REVENUE so that HPD can focus on law enforcement and violence PREVENTION??
Do you see the downward spiral Hudson is caught in?! It's all a result of complete mismanagement. It doesn't have to be this way, though.
It seems that the City should respond in kind with a similar increase for the library and summer youth programs. I'm not sure why we subsidize other municipalities anyway.
ReplyDelete