NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — In Niagara Falls, many businesses are concerned about a proposed tax hike they face in Mayor Paul Dyster's proposed budget.
Mayor Dyster unveiled his 2020 budget on Tuesday night. In it, there's a 9 percent property tax hike on businesses.
"I like to keep the prices as low as I can, but I do raise the prices you have to," said Tony Poletti, the owner of Marketside Restaurant in Niagara Falls, who says there's definitely a cost of doing business here.
And he doesn't think Mayor Dyster's proposed 9 percent tax hike on businesses is needed.
"The city has to start looking to cut and get revenue from other places other than the tax base because it's already stretched so thin," Poletti said.
"This is just another insult to business," added Russ Petrozzi, the owner of Capitol Cleaners, who says rising costs including rising property taxes is hurting businesses.
"To do business in New York everything has gone up and your product you can only sell a product for so much money so it comes out of our pocket," Petrozzi said.
On Wednesday, 2 On Your Side spoke to Mayor Dyster to find out why the 9 percent tax hike on businesses is needed. Where did that figure come from?
"Well, we wanted to go up to but not exceed the tax cap in order to raise some additional revenues to help cover increasing costs for things like health care," Dyster said.
Also, in order to balance the budget, Dyster has proposed a controversial garbage user fee.
"Of the 17,000 stops in the solid refuse in the City of Niagara Falls, only approximately 1,000 are at commercial properties," Dyster said.
So, this proposed tax increase on businesses, according to Mayor Dyster, is a way to balance the financial burden.
This on top of other tax hikes on businesses in recent years.
"The way to fix that is to go forward and do a reassessment. We haven't had one in 15 years," Dyster said.
Those property tax reassessments can be controversial as well.
Something that has already happened in Buffalo and has made a lot of homeowners unhappy.
The Dyster administration says the city is exploring the idea of doing a reassessment, which would take at least a couple of years to do.
The administration and city council have a couple of months to work on and pass the budget.