BUFFALO, N.Y. — The new acting finance commissioner for the city of Buffalo was in the hot seat Tuesday during a finance committee meeting of the Common Council that lasted over 90 minutes.
With the lingering concerns regarding the city's finances, acting commissioner Ray Nosworthy explained the current status of the budget deficit.
"The current projection of the deficit is $17.68 million," Nosworthy said. "That is something that, to some might sound alarming, but it's not something that was a surprise in recent days, right?"
Acting commissioner Nosworthy called it a "perfect storm of multiple things" that led to the current deficit projection.
"We had an uninspected absence of fund balance that we anticipated using at the end of this year that fund balance we anticipated using was $14.9 million," Nosworthy said. "Not having that money is the main driver of this deficit projection."
Additionally, Nosworthy said that the police and fire department have exceeded their overtime projections to the tune of $11 million additional dollars, other city personnel overages totaled $1.8 million.
On top of that, the city hasn't collected a projected $4.2 million from various taxes and fees, such as casino or cannabis taxes.
"When I say this administration is looking at every other option to make sure the mission critical needs of the city are being met and as little disruption in personnel is realized, we're not talking about layoffs at all," Nosworthy told the council.
The acting commissioner says the city will enact vacancy control measures going into the second half of the fiscal year. According to Nosworthy, acting Mayor Chris Scanlon has mandated that every department reduce expenses.
"I'm calling for and actually put a hard limit of a 10% decrease on departmental expenses," Nosworthy said. "That's the first time we've done that right, and that was a directive coming right from the administration. We are asking for department heads to find efficiencies that equate to a reduction of 10% in their current year adopted budget."
But the city won't be able to cut its way out of a budget deficit without greatly impacting city services.
Nosworthy admitted that the administration will likely be tapping unobligated American Rescue Plan funds to fill the budget gap so that they city doesn't have to give the money back.
"We are looking at filing an amendment and putting more money into revenue replacements," Nosworthy said. "That is something that it's it's going to be a major godsend for us if we can get some type of agreement on getting that funding to plug that gap."
It is unknown right now, at least publicly, how much of the remaining American Rescue Plan funds are unobligated—meaning the contracts to the organizations the money was promised to haven't been finalized.
"We're all aware of the deadline at the end of the year as far as having the ARPA funds obligated," said acting Mayor Chris Scanlon. "One thing I don't want to do is give any money back to the federal government, I want to make sure we're keeping it here and improving things in the city of Buffalo."
Acting Mayor Scanlon alluded to a review of ARPA contracts that is being, or has been, conducted by Drescher Malecki LLP. The purpose of the review, according to Scanlon, is to review the contracts and determine how much money remains.
"They're just looking at every contract that's going out, what the stages of each contract, whether we can realistically get these contracts completed by the end of the year," Scanlon said.
The acting mayor said there should be an update about that review "any day now."