SYRACUSE -- Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner delivered her second State of the City address Thursday night, with a mix of looking forward and back.
"It was a great balance of the reality of what's going on, and promises of what she can do, which of course is limited," said resident Ruth Kutz.
Much of Miner's speech focused on the economy. She talked about how she cut the city payroll by nearly 200 jobs since January 2010. Between those cuts, and an early retirement incentive, Miner says the city has saved about $7 million a year. She also talked about how cooperation with Onondaga County and consolidation of some services helped save money in 2010.
Looking forward, Miner is taking a hard stance on cutting overtime costs for police officers at Hancock Airport. The city pays about $3 million each year in overtime costs for airport police. Mayor Miner says she wants to bring in a private security service to help keep overtime costs under control, and to keep airline ticket fares lower. Miner says airlines end up covering most of those overtime costs, and they pass it on to travelers.
In her address, Miner said she would not raise property taxes. "Increasing property taxes to solve these challenges in this time of national economic downturn is not an acceptable answer," she said, "Moreover, all one needs to do is see that Syracuse's average assessment for a single family home is $69,906 and you immediately understand that our families cannot afford any further increases. Therefore, we must find ways to cut expenditures to bring our spending plan into balance."
Much of Syracuse's budget is riding on Albany, and the city is anxiously awaiting the state budget, which comes out on February 1st, to see how deep it will cut. "We don't know yet, 53% of our revenue comes from the state, but in 2010 we looked at our bottom line, looked for places we could save," said Miner.
But with not much left to cut except jobs and services, lawmakers are bracing for tough decisions. "We've given out free services before, free police and that's just not going to happen anymore. Festivals are going to have to pay for that, we are out of money. We are facing a $16 to $30 million budget hole and that's before we even know what our state cuts are," said Common Councilor Ryan McMahon. The Syracuse budget will be presented in late March or early April. Common Council will vote on it about a month later.
The mayor is also moving the city forward with technology. Syracuse will now have a Facebook page and a YouTube channel to help get information out to people of the city.
"I think everyone is just hoping and praying in their hearts that there is going to be a true essence of change. And like everything else, time will tell," said life-long Syracuse resident Deboreh Preaster.
The mayor says the new year will be about innovation, changing the culture of government, and challenging the way things are done.
Click here to read Mayor Miner's speech.
Click here to read the summary of the speech.
