Albany’s Budget - 2017-2025. 14 Observations

We added four additional pieces of information.  Note that all of this added detail is in the accompanying Excel spreadsheet.

Growth rate - to understand the budgetary changes over time we added a field that analyzes the overall growth (or decline) between 2017 and 2025 budgets to every Revenue Overview, Revenue Detail and Expenditure Detail line

 We created a separate table that, for each revenue component, shows the growth between the previous year and current year.  

For example, State Aid declined 3% between 2021 ($16.458 million) and 2022 ($15.883 million).  We also color coded the table so that revenue increases are green (a generally favorable event); and revenue loss is colored in red.  Note the decline in “All Other” in 2025 as the Federal American Rescue Plan Act funding declines dramatically. 

 We created a separate table that, for each expenditure component, shows the growth or decline between the previous year and current year.  We color coded this table where expenditure decline (generally a positive thing) shows up in green; expenditure growth shows up in red.  For example, in 2025 FICA costs increased by 6% over 2024.

 Lastly, we added for every Revenue and Expenditure component two additional calculations.  We added the median yearly growth rate and the standard deviation of the growth rate.  

The standard deviation of the growth rate helps us understand which components are the most volatile or dynamic over 9 years of budgets.  The higher the number, the higher the dynamic nature.  For example, “All Other” revenue has the highest standard deviation (0.38) and is the most dynamic due to the lumpy nature of how we receive Federal funding, especially ARPA funding.  19A PILOT funding is the most consistent (Albany’s 19A funding is unchanged over 9 years at $15 million/year) and the standard deviation is therefore 0.00.

  Comparing budgets between two cities can be an apples and oranges exercise (or maybe a honey crisp apple vs. a granny smith apple comparison).  Cities are different, their populations and needs are different and we don’t want to infer too much in our comparisons.  However we can look at some basic data.  Let’s look at Albany versus a few neighbors and upstate peers.  We will use budget dollars per capita as our comparison metric.

 All cities are in the same ballpark and Albany is the lowest per capita spend of these four cities.  In a separate article we examine the inequities in AIM funding; Syracuse and Rochester receive more AIM funding on a per capita basis than Albany which may drive some portion of their higher per capita spending. 

   Departmental Income is expected to grow from $17.87 to $25.19 million, a 41% growth rate of $7.32 million.   We attempted to unpack what is behind this growth in the 2025 budget.  We found several revenue lines that represent 6 figure growth (e.g. “DGS Fees” will grow from $550k to $800k, “Code Violations Court” grows from $86k to $225k).

We did find that “Traffic Viol/Pol Court Fines” shows a projected $6 million increase.  The budget narrative does not call out that “Fines and Forfeitures” falls under Departmental Income, however it is the best explanation.  Our assumption is that this revenue increase is all driven by the introduction of school-related speed cameras.  Note that we can see a quote in the Times Union that the Mayor added $6 million revenue in the budget for the speed camera program; we would expect that this commentary should show up in the budget narrative.

 In any industry or level of government, new revenue streams of any type are exceptionally challenging to project accurately.   For the school speed camera program payment rates, growth or decline of violators, and decisions that the City makes on the minimum threshold to issue a ticket will all impact how much revenue this program will generate.   

The Albany Police Department has a known shortfall of full time officers. There is a single comment in the 2025 Budget narrative about closing this gap:

“Launched the Join Albany Public Safety hiring campaign, including developing lateral hiring policies, a dedicated web page, and APD digital marketing campaign.”

It is beyond the scope of this article to suggest strategies for closing this gap, however we can examine one potential impact of staffing shortfalls.  Overtime represents 22.5% of the Police Department wage budget ($8.31 million out of $36.9)   

Not all APD overtime is driven by staffing shortfalls.  Here are some starter questions:

1. What portion of APD overtime is driven by staffing shortfalls?
2. For staffing-related overtime what is the long-term impact to retention?
3. For staffing-related overtime what is the long-term budgetary impact for retirement spending?
4. What is the potential to shift overtime expenses into efforts that drive recruitment and retention?

 Albany’s Debt Service is the most volatile expense, year over year, when measured by growth rate standard deviation.   

 Public debt is not a bad thing, it is how we build infrastructure.  We do want to understand what the debt is for.  In our personal lives if we pay a car loan, a credit card payment, or a mortgage payment we can put cause and effect together - we paid for a trip on a credit card and now the bill comes due.   

The 2025 Budget narrative does have a schedule that shows the current anticipated payments.  

 What is missing is an explanation of what did this debt buy us as a City?  What are we paying for now that we have been receiving the benefit from?  Debt Service is slightly less than 8% of the overall City budget; we should have more visibility on the breakdown.