It’s budget season in Buffalo, and Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s proposed budget outlines plans to fill a projected $70 million budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year, including a proposed 3% hotel occupancy tax and the sale of four city-owned parking ramps.
But it’s the proposed property tax increase that has people talking.
In the majority of his 18 years as Buffalo mayor, Byron Brown did not raise the property tax rate. Enter his successor, Scanlon, whose first budget revealed Tuesday includes a proposed 8% property tax hike.
It will equate to an extra $11 per month for a property assessed at $150,000, according to the administration's calculations.
"This increase will generate around $13.7 million for the upcoming year alone," Scanlon said.
Though the proposed increase is the same for both commercial and residential properties, local property tax lawyer, Marcus Catlin of Duffy & Catlin, said that commercial property owners already pay more.
"In the city of Buffalo, there is what's called a bifurcated tax rate. So commercial property owners pay a different rate, a higher rate than a residential property," he said. "So any increase is going to affect commercial property owners a little more than residential property owners."
Buffalo business owner Jonathan Welch runs Talking Leaves Books, an independent bookstore in the Elmwood Village that’s been operating for 50 years. He said the proposed tax increase is "inevitable."
"One is never terribly happy about tax increases, but as somebody who's lived in the city a long time I know that it's necessary, that the budget crisis is real, and the previous administrations have tried to sort of play around with that by not increasing taxes," he said.
Though Welch does not own the building which houses his business, he feels that any tax bumps will trickle down.
"We will be affected by it because it will be passed on to us in rent increases or in some kind of assessment after the fact."
With more than half of the city's housing units occupied by renters, potential rent increases are also a concern for Janayia Capers at PUSH Buffalo, a nonprofit which advocates for quality affordable housing for city residents.
"Buffalo is already in a housing crisis," Capers said. "We've been seeing rent increases substantially for the past couple of years, and I think that this will impact renters even more."
The budget is now being reviewed by the Buffalo Common Council which has the power to make amendments through May 26.
A public hearing is scheduled for April 29 at City Hall.
