BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Buffalo Common Council approved a new city budget on Wednesday night with a lower property tax increase than what was included in the mayor's budget proposal.
The Common Council passed the budget Wednesday night, on-time, after a lot of debate. Mayor Byron Brown says they negotiated the changes that were made together.
The big change includes lowering the mayor's proposed residential tax hike from 9 percent to 4.19 percent. That means for a house in the City of Buffalo with an average value of $160,700, your property taxes will go up $72 a year.
Despite the agreement, councilmembers still have concerns about not having enough money in the future.
"This tax increase is nothing compared to what is going to happen in the future. Either they're going to have to make draconian cuts where it is going to hurt. We should have been making these cuts years ago. To our fault, we should have done it. And we pushed it down the road, We kicked the can down the road," said David Rivera, Niagara District Council member on Wednesday.
Mayor Brown added: "There's no question there are financial challenges. This is roughly my fourth time raising taxes in 18 budgets, and we have a revenue issue in the City of Buffalo. The cost of everything is going up. To provide the services that residents need and want, we need to raise more money."
2 On Your Side's Kelly Dudzik asked: "How do you plan on doing that because you won't have as much money as you wanted to get by raising taxes by 9-percent. There's still going to be a shortfall, so do you crack down on overtime? What else can you do?"
Mayor Brown replied: "Yeah, we, we will be looking to reduce overtime, we will be raising fees. That is part of the budget, raising fees, so we will look at a whole variety of things to raise revenue to protect our services."
Mayor Brown has until June 8 to review the budget as it was approved Wednesday night by the Buffalo Common Council. Mayor Brown says he anticipates signing off on it.