BY JIMMY LAWTON
North Country This Week

OGDENSBURG — Ogdensburg City Council tabled a budget that proposed 27 staff cuts and kept taxes flat on Tuesday.

Councilor Steve Fisher said the council needed more time to do a deep dive and look at other options before moving forward with the budget.

Council Michael Powers said he’d prefer to vote down the proposed budget rather than table it, but eventually decided tabling would suffice.

Councilor Dan Skamperle said the proposal put forward by City Manager Stephen Jellie was “criminal” and said he believed the city council could avoid such deep cuts regardless of what councilors want to do.

However, Jellie said at a minimum at least 20 positions would need to be cut.

The council is on a bit of a time crunch to come up with a better plan, as the charter requires a preliminary budget to be adopted by mid-November.

The budget outlines three courses of action.

The first includes eliminating the police department, which he says is the most efficient and “would require the lease reductions of other city staff and services, without raising property taxes.

The second option, he says, is much less efficient. It would require staffing and program cuts across all city departments without raising taxes.

“Every service in the city will be impacted negatively and the prospect of revival for the city will be significantly diminished,” Jellie says in his budget.

The third option would be the least efficient, according to Jellie. He says it would continue to avoid “financial reality” and would guarantee further annual staffing reductions as overall expenses exceed revenue projections.

The budget Jellie is recommending to council is based on option 2, but he notes that the first option remains the better despite its unpopularity.

Jellie says the proposed budget would include no tax increase keeping the rate at $15.88 per $1,000 of assessed property value.

He notes that sales tax decreases by 26.5% and reduces pre-2022 debt by 36%.

The budget calls for a 28% reduction in staff, which amounts to 27 positions and would put the city at 46% of the constitutional tax limit with exclusions or 76% without.

He says the budget does maintain a solid fund balance, but does not address needed capital improvements.

Under the plan staffing would drop from 96 to 67 employees.

Jellie’s budget calls for five priorities.

The first includes converting the City to a Town, the second would be to secure home rule legislation on sales tax.

The third includes consolidating services with the county.

Additionally the plan calls for addressing New York State’s abandoned properties and creating a combination career/volunteer fire department.

Council agreed to table the budget in a 6-1 vote with Mayor Jeffrey M. Skelly opposed.