BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown released his proposed $568 million budget late last week, and it includes a proposed property tax hike.
It would be the first property tax increase in years. Now it's up to the common council to analyze it and potentially make changes.
In a very quick special session on Monday, the Buffalo Common Council officially received the budget, so now they can go through it line-by-line to see what those potential changes can be. They've got to get this done in the next month.
The mayor's budget includes a proposed property tax hike that would raise taxes on a home assessed at $100,000 by $50 a year.
2 On Your Side talked with some common council members on Monday who think the roughly 5% proposed property tax hike is too high. They have talked about doing it incrementally and plan on going through everything in the budget in the next few weeks.
"We do need to increase taxes, but incrementally. Not a major issue like 5%, that's a little bit onerous right now, and I want to understand what the impacts are that we've increased it that much. I want to know where inflation has hit us. What areas. I know that gas is definitely an area where we're going to do some increases. So we have to see where the rubber hits the road and what we can do to kind of minimize it and not hit someone over the head trying to increase taxes 5% which is just a big number," Buffalo Common Council Member Rasheed Wyatt said.
"It would have to be incremental. It couldn't be that high. We just had a revaluation last year. Many people got hit with their revaluation, and it should have been done incrementally over a period of time instead of doing it, you know, almost 5% all at once. So we're looking at reducing that. I think there's a will there among many of the council members to do that," Buffalo Common Council Member David Rivera said.
There are also proposals to raise the user fees for trash in the city for the first time since 2018, so the common council is going to look at that, too.
There is a public hearing on May 10 for anyone to voice their opinions.