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Former state rep Cliff Newton says the City is taking money from the unassigned fund balance to pay for things that should be in the budget (Courtesy photo)
Disingenuous. A good word for the Rochester 2026 budget announcement that it would be $931,280 below the tax cap.
Sure, we get a low number at the start, and then, almost immediately, supplemental appropriations come forward asking to spend millions more. How does more spending after the budget adoption affect the budget bottom line at year's end?
Then, the raiding of $6.2 million from the "cookie jar" (unassigned fund balance) to keep taxes low and cover government largesse, is bad in that we are using it to cover overspending.
Is that really what the unassigned fund balance is for? I remember reading somewhere that it was for emergencies. Is overspending an emergency?
Simple math tells me that our leaders took $6.2 million from the cookie jar to lessen the shock of overspending.
But wait! Didn't we just buy the Care Pharmacy Complex too. That $3+million also came from the cookie jar. And it's not their cookie jar. It's the people's cookie jar.
See what I mean about disingenuous?
What will happen when the cookie jar is low or even empty? Answer? The s--- will hit the fan, taxes will rise, and, as always, the people will have to pay the bill.
As one who collected the signatures for the tax and spending cap, what the good citizens of Rochester told me repeatedly was that they didn't mind paying a reasonable increase in taxes, along the lines of inflation (Consumer Price Index).
But the city is ignoring that, and spending way over that.
Last point I would like to make is that since 2000, Rochester residents have been blindly 'investing' in a fund (with changing names) to soften the blow of when Turnkey closes. After 25 years, isn't it time we get a true accounting of how much has gone into those funds, what investments have been made, and what is our return on those investments?
With their ideas and our money, some people are definitely going to go places. The question is do we want to continue to follow in the same direction without proof it is the right direction?
Cliff Newton is a former state rep serving Rochester, a leader in passing the city's tax cap and lifelong Rochester resident
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