Just as Councilman Dominick Calsolaro predicted in this week's issue, the campaign for Corey Ellis has finally come back to life today in order to issue a round of press releases criticizing Mayor Jerry Jennings' 2010 budget.
The new budget proposes $2.3 million in additional spending over last year. Ellis maintains that this is unacceptable and the city needs to redo the budget, keeping in mind the economic realities. We must reduce spending and eliminate the residential tax hike, Ellis said. "The mayor's claim that he has made 'incremental cuts to all departmental budgets' is simply untrue; twenty-six of the departmental budgets have proposed increases for 2010."
Ellis pointed out that the largest "cut" in a departmental budget was $475,000 in the Central Garage budget for gasoline. However, this was not a budget cut but simply reflects the fact that gas is much cheaper than it was last year.
Ellis explained that many departments simply did not cut any spending, such as Department 5010 (Maintenance of Streets) and Department 1490 (Parks Maintenance). There are no cuts to any line items in either of these departmental budgets.
Care to complain about the budget? The Ellis campaign suggests that you make it to the caucus tonight at 5:30 at City Hall, and even provided a list of the main issues that are facing you, the Albany voter:
- The citizens of Albany are facing another tax hike that will be imposed by Mayor Jennings on residential homeowners;
- Continued very high levels of borrowing in the Jennings budget ($20.3M for 2010);
- Mayor Jennings's 2010 budget is not balanced - it uses approximately $5.3 million from reserve funds to fill the hole in revenues versus expenditures;
- Mayor Jennings's 2010 budget fails to adequately address an $11 million budget deficit pushed forward into future budget years, 2011 and beyond - a gaping hole for a $163M total annual budget.
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