Broome County adopted a nearly $474 million spending plan for 2025 earlier this month.
The 2025 budget cuts property taxes for the sixth year in a row. This year, residents will see a 0.3 percent reduction in property taxes.
Broome County Executive Jason Garnar, who was recently reelected to a third term after running unopposed, signed the budget into law earlier this month.
The spending plan includes raises for county employees, investments in infrastructure, and a $5 million economic development and housing fund, meant to support local projects.
Garnar said in the past few years, the county has steered a lot of federal COVID relief funding into housing.
“We put a lot of money into housing projects, both affordable and market-rate, from COVID, from the American Rescue Plan funding that we had, and we've run out of it,” Garnar said. “We're all out of money, it all had to be allocated by the end of this year.”
Now that the funding has been exhausted, Garnar said the county is hoping that putting money aside in the budget for local projects—and working to get more federal and state support—will fill that gap.
“I think over the next four years, the amount of housing that we're going to be able to build out is really going to shape the direction of our community,” Garnar said. “We have to grow our population and we have to provide more housing opportunities for people here. It just has to happen.”
The budget also attempts to address a backlog of vacancies in county positions. Nearly 300 county jobs are being upgraded, totalling nearly $4 million in raises. Garnar said they are also working to streamline the county’s job application process to make it easier to apply.
“We are continuing to invest in our workforce, upgrade a lot of positions, offer better contracts, like union contracts, for employees across the board than we've done in a long, long time,” Garnar said. “Just like any other government or company, we are really having a problem getting people to work for us.”
The budget allocates an additional $2 million in funding for the county sheriff’s office. The county is also introducing new emergency response vehicles for on-site treatment and medical care.
Garnar said the new emergency response “fly car” team can treat patients who are having medical issues, but don’t need to be transported to a hospital. The county is hoping that will take pressure off of already overburdened ambulance services.
“These wait times to get an ambulance are just increasing and increasing and increasing,” Garnar said. “So we have these fly cars, where EMTs are going to be able to go out, they're going to get dispatched to places where people just need to receive medical attention at their homes. They don't need to be transported, and that's going to allow ambulances to go to the places that really require people to be transported back to the hospitals.”
Garnar said several capital projects are coming to fruition in 2025, including renovations to Grippen Park in Endicott and a veterans service center in Binghamton.
Another big ticket item in this year’s budget is the demolition of the old IBM facility in Endicott. The county has committed almost $2 million toward the project. Crews could start tearing down the dilapidated buildings as early as next month, according to reporting from WNBF.