Albany's Property Taxes

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Published April 28, 2026

TL;DR - For nearly a decade the City Administration valued a low property tax growth rate and as our expenditures caught up with inflation we didn’t raise property taxes, rather we made up the gap with overly optimistic non-property tax revenue sources which didn’t meet expectations.  We had an unrealistic belief that additional state aid would prop up our City's finances and save us from making tough decisions. 

Image above - the 2026 City of Albany Budget Book, page 4.

As we publish this post in late April 2026 the City of Albany’s Administration says that they are gathering data and making decisions about how we solve our financial crisis.  The crisis is enormous, dating back to 2025, continuing into 2026 and for the foreseeable future until the City can manage expenses and grow revenue.

The Administration hasn’t been particularly forthcoming with data that would allow the public to participate in (or understand) the decision-making.  We do have enough data to analyze some root causes which would suggest actions that the City should or could take.

We see that the City has 6 levers to pull to address the $22 million gap and the inevitable gaps in 2027 and beyond.  Let’s walk through them:

1. New York State bailout - this is the “Project Hochul Mary” to get as much as possible from the state to save our City
2. Cut spending - this is a no-brainer and will need to happen, operating expenses, people costs, capital expenditures
3. Raise non-aid, non-property tax revenue streams - these are the AirBnB taxes, the school speed zone taxes, increasing the costs of permits, etc.  We have not had great success with this lever historically
4. Use our reserves - we unfortunately don’t know what we have left in reserves (see the point about the Administration being forthcoming), we believe that there is not much left
5. Grow our property tax base by incenting residential housing of all types, for all neighborhoods - this is the medium-term play that we 100% support, but this won’t help us until 2027/2028
6. Raise property taxes 

We have noted a few times in our writing that property tax increases are inevitable.  In this article we will spend some time answering a few questions:

• How much of the City’s budget is supported by property taxes?
• How have property taxes changed over the last 8 years?
• What has the City said about the size of property tax increases with each budget cycle?

All of the data below looks at the City’s property tax revenue in aggregate, and we’re making statements based on the aggregate property tax.  We understand that there are always issues with individual property taxes and questions of fairness; this analysis doesn’t drill into that.

We are doing this analysis using budgeted total revenue and budgeted property tax revenue.  While there are some small differences when you present the data using actuals, they are immaterial for describing the City’s decisions and the consequences of those decisions.

This is pretty straightforward data.  We can look at the last 10 years of budgets and extract two data points:

• The City’s total budget
• The City’s budgeted property tax revenue

From those two points we can create a simple metric - Property tax as a percentage of budgeted revenue.

Between 2017 and 2026 the City’s budget grew by $52 million while budgeted property tax revenue grew by almost $7 million.  Roughly 4% less of our revenue budget comes from property tax - 32-33% in the late 2010s to 28+% in 2025-26.  4% of a $228 million budget is $9.12 million.  

Note - we could slice the data different ways however the results are meaningfully the same.  For example, we looked at excluding Federal Aid from the total revenue calculations (i.e. Property Tax as a % of the (Total Revenue-Federal Aid)).  This would eliminate the lumpiness of the America Rescue Plan Act funding that passed through the City.  However we didn’t find that it changed the story that property tax has dropped in its contribution to our budget.

Budgeting is a reaction to externalities (inflation being the biggest one, but also state aid), and the City’s decisions and priorities.  So let’s take a look at the yearly growth rate of inflation, the City’s budget, the City’s budget without Federal aid (to take away the lumpiness of ARPA revenue and expenditures) and property tax.  Here’s the table:

Looking at this data in a table is challenging, it is easier visualized in a chart.  Below we show a graph with the cumulative growth of each of these four factors which is a better way to view the data, indexed to 2017.  

As an example of what we mean by cumulative - if we call Inflation in 2017 equal to 1, then at the end of 2018 it is 1.022 (a 2.2% growth), and at the end of 2019 it is 1.044 (another 2.2% on top of 1.022.  And so on. 

This is the story as we see it, using the chart above as a reference:  

1. Inflation grew over 8 years, dramatically between 2021 and 2024.
2. The City managed expenses until 2021-2022 when inflation negatively impacted our costs.
3. The City valued consistently low property tax growth and the percentage of our budget powered by property tax dropped.  
4. 2025 was the reality check where expenditures had to catch up with 4 years of inflation growth.
5. As our property tax growth decisions caught up with the City, the City attempted to close the revenue gap using speculative revenue streams.  Examples of this include new programs such as the school speed zone camera citation program and overly optimistic revenue growth of permit fees and sales taxes.
6. The bad decisions of #5 have now caught up with us

It’s important for us to understand what was said during this time period about property tax growth. The best way to do that is to look at the old budget books (https://www.albanyny.gov/653/Budget-Office).  

What we found was a lack of explanation from the Mayoral administration concerning the tax levy changes.  In the most important document communicating the decisions behind hundreds of millions of dollars of spending, this is what we have for explanations on the property tax decisions:

• 2026 - “We also worked tirelessly to hold the line on taxes, only increasing the property tax levy approximately 1.2% annually over the last 12 years.” 
• 2025 - “Increase of the Property Tax Levy by 2%. Note: the property tax levy has increased by 1.0% annually since 2015.”
• 2024 - “Increase of the Property Tax Levy by 1.6%. Note: the property tax levy has only increased by 0.9% annually since 2015.”
• 2023 - “Increase of the Property Tax Levy by 1.5%. Note: the property tax levy has only increased by 0.82% annually since I became Mayor”
• 2022 - No explanation
• 2021 - “$1 million tax levy increase”

That’s it.  One of the most important yearly budgetary decisions and we have at most two sentences that describe each year’s decision.

What do we take from this?  For a period of 8-10 years the Administration (who controls the budget) had a belief system that keeping property tax growth as low as possible was job #1 and we can see little attention was paid to the long-term consequences.  

It is our belief that property tax increases - significant increases - will be a component of closing the City of Albany’s budget gap beginning in 2027.  We don’t want taxes to increase dramatically (we live in Albany too), but there is a gap between what we want and what we must.

We also will reiterate that this is a view of property tax in aggregate.  Is there unfairness at the individual property level?  Absolutely, and this is not unique to the City of Albany.  Property tax inequity exists everywhere.

Is the average property in Albany taxed significantly more than other cities, our upstate peers such as Syracuse or Rochester, or the suburbs around Albany?  We don’t know and it isn’t a simple answer.  Looking at just property tax revenue per capita or other metrics is an oversimplified analysis.  The net is that we’re skeptical when someone says “City of Albany residents are taxed too much.”  Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, let’s find the data that helps us analyze this objectively.

We’re continuing to analyze the budget and our City's financial position.  We welcome comments or criticisms on our social media posts or drop a note to albanydatastories@gmail.com.  If you think we are misreading the data or not using the right data, call us out.