Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown says his $482.6 million budget, unveiled Tuesday afternoon, holds the line on residential taxes and cuts the taxes on commercial buildings. It also provides additional services and summer youth job hiring.
Brown says city residents will see better parks because of more age-appropriate facilities and cleaner sidewalks because City Hall will be buying special sweepers for neighborhood business districts.
The mayor says citizens will have a better quality of life because of continuing expansion of city Police and Fire Departments. The budget provides funding for new classes of 34 police officers and 43 firefighters.
"With these new classes, Buffalo's total uniformed police force will top 800. The fire department's uniformed workforce will total 719," Brown said.
Brown says as the firefighters being trained now go into the field he expects to see some easing of expensive overtime costs. The class for new police officers is expected to start soon, although there isn't a date yet.
Brown says holding the line on taxes is difficult because of rising costs to fuel, fringe benefits, and a "staggering" 21 percent increase in pension costs. The mayor says last year, pension costs rose about 10 percent.
Council President Richard Fontana says he likes a lot of the proposals, especially on park improvements and sidewalk sweepers. Fontana says he has some priorities in the upcoming budget hearings.
"I want to see the numbers on the tax cut, making sure that those are sound numbers. I want to look at what we have budgeted on the different lines. I also want to look at what those pension costs actually are, because pension costs are getting out of control in all the cities in New York State,"
Common Council Majority Leader Demone Smith says the citizens will probably like what the budget does on taxes.
"It held the line of taxes. It held the line on the user fee. Who can't be happy? There's no extra taxes," Smith said.
Other council members say they like the mayor's push for better quality of life in the city and more demolitions of decaying buildings.
Council budget hearings on the spending plan begin Wednesday morning.
