BUFFALO, N.Y. — We've heard in recent years about inflation raising costs for consumers, and now it appears the City of Buffalo's operating budget is also under considerable financial pressure.
As we told you last month, Buffalo Common Council members started spreading concerns about increasing costs and decreasing revenues, and now that also applies to recent costs for improved snow removal on city streets.
Many city residents were pleased last month with the city's seemingly more nimble and coordinated response on snow removal with the use of pre-staged private contractors to attack the residential neighborhood streets, just as the more traditional plow fleet was working the main streets.
But that comes at a cost as we heard from Mayor Byron Brown on one of our 5:30 p.m. newscasts last month. He spoke with 2 On Your Side's Claudine Ewing on Jan. 18th.
"I can tell your viewers the cost to the City of Buffalo is in the millions to fight this storm. We know businesses lost revenue. I have said to federal officials in 2022 that storms of this nature should get FEMA relief," the mayor said.
Mayor Brown was not available Thursday, but the city confirmed it spent over $6 million on those January storms, with $5 million specifically went to the contractors.
The idea of federal FEMA reimbursement for snow with "the no dough for snow" argument has been raised for years by local officials.
But that's the tip of the budget iceberg in some ways with costs going up for a new police contract, vehicle purchases, legal settlements and other factors, And all of that just as federal COVID funding is running out.
So now we may see some difficult budget balancing according to City Council President Christopher Scanlon: "We've got to adjust out budget on the revenue side. We've got to to start bringing in more money to the City of Buffalo, whether it's this storm we dealt with a couple of weeks ago. We have to pay for that type of service, whether it's the Department of Public Works, Police, Fire, we have to be able to provide services to the public. And the revenues coming in, I don't think are matching up with what we're trying to do, and so it could be taxes, fees, other things."