Paul Szmal: And welcome back to FLX Morning, it is 837. Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason joins us now for our usual recap of the City Council meeting and after a couple of weeks of light agendas Chuck this one was pretty full.
Chuck Mason: Yup, we're finally to the month of April and the month of April is when we'll start talking about the city budget. So last night we had a full agenda with a handful of resolutions to take care of first but then our first look at walking through some of the departments for the city budget.
Paul Szmal: Let's start by going through a couple of those resolutions. One was a sale of property at 68 Francis Street.
Chuck Mason: Yes, and this sounds like it's going to be a good return to productive use for this property on Francis Street. This was a property that the city had taken through tax foreclosure but it's being sold to an individual that is interested in fixing it up and actually living at the property. So the city sold the property on Francis Street for $40,000 and the owner has a year from the time that they start the improvements to the property to wrap the property up and have it back to productive use.
Paul Szmal: So sounds like another win. This is a successful program that we've had with our real estate agent. The real estate agency is actually their name and they've done a great job with getting the excess properties that the city has available out there out to the public marketed and we're able to get these properties back out of the tax rolls and back into productive uses for these neighborhoods. So another unanimous vote for the council last night to get that property back into working order.
There was also another resolution for the awarding of a contract with a group called the Baker Tillery Advisory Group, LP. What was that for, Chuck?
Chuck Mason: This is a very specialized project in association with our significant upgrade that we've got going on down at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. There are tax credits available at the federal government level that are tied to the Inflation Reduction Act of the last few years. However, to be able to get, we estimate that we could probably qualify for anywhere from $2 to $11 million worth of funding through this program. However, it's a very specialized program and you need the help of higher level tax consultants to help with the process. So we put out an RFP looking for those specialized tax consultants and last night the council unanimously awarding to a group called Baker Tilley, who will be leading the city through this process in a contract not to exceed $125,000.
Now, there was definitely discussion last night because there's a lot of news, as you know, Paul, coming out of Washington DC these days. And sometimes in the rhetoric that you hear, you'll hear that some of these programs out of the Inflation Reduction Act from the previous administration are going to be rolled back or eliminated altogether. So there's some unknowns at the moment and the contract that we have with Baker Tilley will be based on the fact that there's some unknowns in the world right now about the future of these programs. So more to come on this, you know, we're marching forward as if the programs are intact, which at the moment they technically still are. However, sometimes in the rhetoric out of Washington, you do hear that these programs may be scaled back or eliminated altogether. More to come on that, but the city's got itself in position. We really feel as though if these programs stay on the books as they are written, we could qualify for anywhere from $2 to $11 million worth of extra financing to come in for that wastewater treatment plant project. So we'll be hearing more about this over the next couple of years as things unfold.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, file that one under work in progress, right?
Chuck Mason: Exactly.
Paul Szmal: All right. And there were a couple of capital resolutions, but also if I remember servicemen correctly last week or the week before at the city council meeting, the four-year capital improvement plan was presented and that was adopted in the meeting last night.
Chuck Mason: That's right. Unanimously, the council had thoroughly reviewed that at a previous council meeting and just put it in a stamp of approval. That's not to say that everything in that booklet will get done, but it's basically the outline of major capital needs that the city has that we will slowly work away at applying for state and federal grants opportunities as they come up to try to accomplish these projects. So the council very appreciative of the work that the staff does to put that document together and unanimously approved that last night.
Paul Szmal: And some of the capital movement and capital budget transfer movement, that's procedural stuff that the council has to go through to be able to allocate money to be used for certain aspects, correct?
Chuck Mason: That's correct. And one of the major things in there is that there's going to be a purchase made for new safety vests, a security vest for our school resource officers. So some of the money that was shifted from one account to another was to help our Auburn Police Department make the purchase of those security vests for our school resource officer program.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason here on FLX Morning. That was just the front half of the meeting. The back half of the meeting was devoted to the start of the budget process, at least in front of the full city council with some budget presentations.
Chuck Mason: That's right. And on April 24th, later this month, the comptroller and our city manager will make a presentation of the first draft of the overall city budget. But last night, our comptroller was on hand, Mary Beth Leeson, to kind of give an overview of what we're looking at. And it's a similar situation that we've been in previous years where you basically, at this point in time in the budget, you've asked all of your departments to submit their budget requests. You take a look at what you anticipate revenues would be. You add everything up. You do the math and you find yourself in a significant, usually budget gap. And that's the work that's going to need to be done over these next few weeks to reduce that budget gap.
So, the comptroller last night kind of laying it out that there's, you know, that budget gap exists again this year. But what she and the city manager will be doing with department heads over the next three to four weeks before a final budget is preliminary presented to the city council is they'll be working to close that budget gap. And they'll come to council with various ideas that the council may have to decide what to do about, you know, addressing the budget shortfalls that may exist.
Now, last night we took a look at three departments. We said Department of Municipal Utilities, I'm sorry, Department of Public Works, then the Engineering Department, and then the City Planning Department, which also oversees our City Code Enforcement Office. So, each department kind of went through the various aspects of what their departments do, taking a look at the budget, taking a look at some of the things that they requested in the budget, trying to justify what they're asking for, but also everybody would have the understanding that realizing that at the end, there's probably going to be a lot of stuff that was in their budget presentations that may not be there in the end due to the tough budget situation that we're walking into.
So, next week, I believe we have our Public Safety Departments coming in front of the council for review of their budgets. And like I said, Paul, April 24th is when we'll have a first preliminary budget presented to the council, which will give the council a more accurate and most accurate. You know, one of the things that we're waiting on right now on the revenue side of things is for the state budget to be finalized. We kind of know what's in the state budget, but you never know until the state budget is actually finally approved. So, there's some factors that aren't known yet, but what the Comptroller and the Manager will do is piece the budget together for an April 24th presentation.
Paul Szmal: And this whole budget process can be one of the most stressful times of the year for a city or a municipality, especially for the reason that you mentioned, the state budget was late being set up. It was supposed to be, I believe, on Monday or Tuesday that that was supposed to be put to bed, or at least this particular phase hasn't happened as of yet. And places like Auburn and other cities and municipalities are having to play a wait-and-see game, and at the same time, they're trying to start the early crunch of the numbers to figure out how to make all the pieces fit.
Chuck Mason: Exactly, and so it makes it challenging, and that's one of the reasons why we did push that initial budget presentation off to the April 24th date. Hopefully, we'll have a state budget by April 24th. Last year, we had one right around that time, so hopefully the players in Albany, but there's a lot of decisions that the council is going to have to make on a local level as well during this budget time. There's been some factors that have really entered into play, the most significant thing being that there was an unfortunate, significant, unanticipated increase in health insurance costs for the city in the last budget year that implemented halfway through the budget. We had budgeted for an increase in health insurance costs, but the increase that came in was actually much, much higher than that, and there's always things that you, you know, what you do in a budget is you take your best projections, you make your best guesses, and you sometimes there's things that are out of your control that happened during the budget year, and unfortunately, this past year, and I think Auburn was not alone, you know, health insurance increases were being doled out to several municipalities in New York State and even private businesses as well.
It's a big factor, and so more to come on next week's meeting with some more, a look at more departments, Paul, and then April 24th we'll have a bigger look at the budget package that the city controller has for us.
Paul Szmal: Well, as always, Chuck, we appreciate the information. Thank you. Have a good weekend, sir.
Chuck Mason: You too, Paul. Have a good weekend, everybody. It is 8 49 on FLX morning.
