City of Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Mayor Paul Dyster's 2012 Proposed Budget Speech

October 3, 2011

Dear Honorable Members of the Niagara Falls City Council:

 I am happy to present to you today the recommended Municipal Budget for the City of Niagara Falls. As a result of sound fiscal management and self‐imposed discipline, the City has been able to preserve financial stability through the last several years in spite of a great deal of turbulence in the State and National economies. Nevertheless, I know that there is great trepidation in the community about what the future may hold. The Great Recession that took hold in the spring of 2008 continues its icy grip on the nation’s fortunes. Closer to home, chronic economic problems forced the State to adopt a 2% Tax Cap on municipalities, and State unions have been asked to adopt contracts with wage and benefit concessions, mandatory furloughs and other stern measures. CSEA agreed; PEF, at least so far, has not. Municipal officials across the state are scrambling from seminar to seminar, comparing notes as they try to fathom how to reconcile the consequences of the tax cap with arbitration‐driven personnel cost increases, escalating health care costs and whopping increases in the state pension bill that they somehow have to shoulder.

In Chautauqua County, County Executive Greg Edwards is proposing a 12% tax increase, layoffs, service cuts and dipping into the county’s fund balance. In Erie County, County Executive Chris Collins is holding the line on property taxes, but at the expense of 308 positions: 153 of them vacant, but 155 currently filled, mostly in the Department of Social Services. In the Town of Lewiston, Supervisor Steve Reiter has scheduled a public meeting amid doubts about meeting the tax cap. There are budget problems just about everywhere. But here in Niagara Falls, we are up to Governor Cuomo’s challenge that "New York has no future as tax capital of the nation."

As I noted last year, all levels of government face a set of challenges that are almost unprecedented in the history of our nation, our state and our city. But as I also pointed out last year, these are not unanticipated challenges, at least not to us here in the City of Niagara Falls. We saw it coming, and we prepared. By late spring of 2008, we were already anticipating and planning for multiple years of hard times and tough budgets. Led by the City Controller, with strong and unwavering support from the City Administrator and City Council, we began taking steps then to deal with the hard times we face now. Our motto is that prior planning prevents poor performance.

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