Schenectady’s mayor wants to raise the city’s property tax levy 42.8 percent. Saratoga Springs is proposing 18 percent. Albany, 15. Next to them, Carmella’s 3.4 percent looks like good management, and that is how it is being sold.
Read how those cities got there. Then read Troy’s budget.
How They Got There
| City | Proposed 2027 increase | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Schenectady | 42.8% levy | $15 million deficit. Past budgets used savings and federal pandemic money. Both are gone. |
| Saratoga Springs | 18% | $7 million deficit. A federal grant paying for firefighters at a new station expired. |
| Albany | 15% levy | $35 million gap. The State Comptroller found its budgets were built on estimates that weren’t reasonable. |
| Troy | 3.42% rate | No deficit announced. Yet. |
Schenectady’s tax rate stayed between $12.77 and $13.58 for ten years. Mayor Gary McCarthy explained how: “In the past, we have used fund balance and we have used (American Rescue Plan Act) money to offset those expenses. Those funds are no longer available.” His 2027 proposal is $19.36.
In Albany, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found the 2025 and 2026 budgets contained “significant revenue and expenditure estimates that were not reasonable.” The city “used temporary federal pandemic aid and fund balance to pay recurring expenditures, including staff salaries.”
Saratoga Springs built a fire station and staffed it with a federal grant. The grant ran out. The firefighters didn’t.
In each city, something was holding the budget up: savings, pandemic money, a grant, optimistic estimates. When it ran out, the bill came due all at once.
Troy’s Version
Troy’s budget doesn’t use pandemic money to pay salaries. It uses other tools to do the same job: make the budget look smaller than the city costs.
Income counted before it arrives. Six revenue lines are budgeted $3.1 million above what the city actually collected in 2025:
| Revenue | 2025 collected | 2027 budgeted |
|---|---|---|
| Sales tax | $20.34M | $21.6M |
| Ambulance billing | $3.09M | $3.75M |
| Golf | $1.14M | $1.57M |
| Vacant building fees | $507K | $800K |
| School resource officers | $70K | $400K |
| Traffic fines | $344K | $505K |
Some of that is new fees. But sales tax has come in under budget two years running, and is tracking short again this year.
Costs counted below what they cost. Fire overtime, police overtime, comp-time buyouts, lawsuits, workers’ compensation, retiree health, snow removal, court costs: about $2.1 million budgeted below what the city spent on them in 2025. Albany’s comptroller report found the same thing: estimates that weren’t reasonable, on both sides of the ledger.
Jobs that are budgeted but won’t be filled. $2.53 million in “salary savings,” about 40 city workers’ pay, assumed to go unspent because the jobs sit empty. The empty jobs pay for the overtime the budget leaves out. It works as long as nobody gets hired.
Savings that are running out. Last year Carmella covered $2 million of the city’s debt payments from the debt reserve to hold down the rate. This budget plans to take $947,883 more. At the end of 2025, the reserve held $2,844,434. Both draws together come to about $104,000 more than that. After 2027, it is gone, and the full debt payment lands on the levy.
A grant with an end date. Troy’s firefighters are partly paid by the same kind of federal SAFER grant Saratoga Springs just lost. Troy’s was scheduled to end December 31, 2026. Fire salaries rise $957,000 in this budget. The budget doesn’t say how much of that is grant-funded jobs moving onto the city’s books.
What Troy Has That They Don’t
Troy is not in fiscal stress. The State Comptroller gives Troy a score of 0, the best possible. Albany is rated in significant stress. Schenectady is rated susceptible. Troy’s reserves are still there.
That is the point. Albany and Schenectady are fixing their budgets after the patches ran out, all at once, with 15 and 43 percent increases. Troy still has time to fix its budget while the patches are holding.
Troy also has less taxable property per resident than any of them: about $61,000, to Schenectady’s $62,000, Albany’s $78,000, and Saratoga Springs’ $302,000. A $2 million hole hurts more here.
What to Ask
The budget presentation is this week. The Council can ask:
- What would this budget cost with revenue set at what the city actually collected, and costs at what they actually cost?
- When does the SAFER grant end, and how many firefighter salaries move onto the levy when it does?
- What happens to the tax rate in 2028, when the debt reserve is gone?
Every one of those cities had a year when its budget looked fine. Troy’s is this one.
Partisan angle: Carmella’s 3.4 percent looks good next to Schenectady because Schenectady already ran out of the things holding its budget up. Troy’s are still running. We would rather pay what Troy honestly costs now than pay the Schenectady price later.
Sources: Spectrum News, October 1, 2026 (Albany); Spectrum News, October 2, 2026 (Schenectady); CBS6, October 8, 2026 (Saratoga Springs); City of Troy, 2027 Proposed Budget (revenues, pp. 12 to 13; Municipal Court, p. 23; Judgments and Claims, p. 86; Police, p. 94; Fire, p. 109; Snow Removal, p. 132; Workers’ Compensation, p. 167; Retiree Health, p. 169; Debt Service Fund, p. 255; department personnel summary pages); City of Troy 2025 Annual Financial Report filed with the NYS Comptroller; NYS Comptroller, Fiscal Stress Monitoring System, 2025 and 2026 Local Government Tax Data; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census; prior Mantello Record entry: October 12, 2026