Binghamton is entering its 2025 budget season.
Mayor Jared Kraham delivered his budget address to a crowd packed into city council chambers Monday. The over $108 million proposal would include a total of $21 million in infrastructure projects and annual maintenance, including a new fire station on the city’s North Side and a city-run youth recreation center.
Kraham touted recently planned housing and infrastructure projects, and efforts to revitalize the city’s downtown arts scene. He said in 2025, Binghamton will receive its first increase in state aid in over a decade. This year, he added, the city’s population grew for the first time since 1950.
“We're influencing statewide policy and legislation and delivering federal funding back to Binghamton in ways we've rarely seen before,” Kraham said. “We all feel it. We can feel it in this room. Binghamton has changed, and there's a lot to be optimistic about. But challenges remain. A third of our families live in poverty, including 40 percent of our children.”
Housing took center stage during the mayor’s address. He outlined new zoning legislation meant to make it easier for development, affordable housing projects and renovations across the city.
“We have to build more housing. Everyone agrees on that, but given the cost of construction today, it's just not feasible for the private sector or even nonprofits to build new units and charge affordable rents without any help,” Kraham said. “The only way these projects pencil out is with grants, local tax incentives like PILOTs [payment in lieu of taxes], and low-income housing tax credits.”
The 2025 budget includes a 0.9% increase in home property taxes.
Kraham said the biggest financial challenge the city faces is inflation, as well as an increase in mandatory contributions to the New York state retirement system.
He also spoke about the presidential election coming up in November, and the responsibility of local elected officials to collaborate.
“Some of our constituents look at Washington, the extreme positions, the move to define people who disagree with you as enemies, the posture, the dominance of special interests above ordinary citizens and figure that's how things work everywhere, including a local government,” Kraham said. “Part of our mission should be to prove them wrong.”
But given a year of some tension between the Republican mayor and the Democrat-led city council, it is unclear whether the two branches of government will be on the same page.
In January, the mayor and city council feuded during a prolonged legal battle over a tied race for the 6th District city council seat. Since then, they have clashed on other issues, including a choice to revamp Binghamton’s defunct human rights’ commission and legislation to add “unhoused” to the city’s protected groups. But they have agreed on other policies.
Council Member Nate Hotchkiss said he feels there has been a lack of collaboration between the mayor’s office and the city council. He said the council was never informed about some big-budget items proposed, including the new fire station and a $4 million pedestrian safety plan.
“These projects didn’t appear overnight. They’ve had to be in the works for some time,” Hotchkiss said. “And to just keep us in the dark about that is really unsettling. And I think it is hypocritical for what [Kraham] was preaching.”
The budget process is still in the very early stages. Now that the mayor has presented his proposals, the city council will hold a series of budget hearings. The first of those hearings is next Thursday.