2018 Budget Message from the Office of Mayor Richard Thomas
In the first mayoral budget, for 2017, Mayor Thomas proposed a zero percent tax increase. This year, we must adopt a budget that goes up 4.85 percent, for one simple yet necessary reason.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation are threatening to fine Mount Vernon over the unacceptable state of our sewer system, which has been failing for years.
Of that proposed 4.85 budget percent increase, 4 percent — more than 80 percent of the total increase — is to pay fines we are going to owe the federal government.
This could have been avoided decades ago, but past mayors, the Comptroller and many on the City Council, refused to comply with orders from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Anticipated fines could amount to $225,000 per day, or nearly $1.7 million a week. We seek to set aside only $2 million.
This is the price of inaction. For years, past and current city leaders ignored the threats and avoided this problem, doing nothing.
This will cost us today not just in dollars, but in quality of life. Residents of our city are already paying that price.
How bad has it gotten? Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the McNeil family were forced out of their home because raw sewage had backed up into their house, flooding them with over 100,000 gallons of untreated human waste. That is a travesty and we cannot allow it to continue to happen.
At our two recent town hall meetings, many residents who have similarly suffered sewer back-ups into their homes spoke about those experiences with passion. The Comptroller and the City Council chose not to attend.
How many more families must be forced out of their homes, stuck with thousands of dollars in repairs and bills, because the city has been shirking its responsibility to replace a collapsed sewer system for over 25 years? Let’s be clear: The federal and state governments will not wait forever. The reckoning is coming.
More than 600,000 feet of pipeline must be inspected. If the City of Mount Vernon had fixed this situation earlier, we would not be on the hook now.
Mount Vernon is on a calendar year, rather than fiscal year, schedule for the budget, which means that lame-duck City Council members, as well as the outgoing Comptroller, already been turned out of office by voters, are trying to pass a budget for after they leave office.
Each 1 percent of the 4.85 increase equates to half a million dollars, so 4 percent equals to $2 million set aside for the anticipated fines. That leaves less than 1 percent increase to pay for the hard-working sanitation workers, police officers, inspectors, sewer crews, engineers and others who make our city run.
The Thomas administration proposes to add approximately 30 new jobs to the Department of Public Works to keep our city clean and make physical improvements to sidewalks and other public space; add 20 police officers to keep us safe and create a realistic salary line for police commissioner so that we can attract talented leadership for our professional force; and a comprehensive economic development plan that will generate more than $5 million in new sales tax revenue.
A budget is not just a financial blueprint, it is an expression of our values and of our vision for the future. The lame-duck City Council and Comptroller should not determine the future of Mount Vernon. Our budget puts the citizens of our city first.
