State of the City: Budget Focus for 2012 Will Impact Nonprofits

Mayor Dick Miller had a stark message in his State of the City address delivered Tuesday night that mentioned possible layoffs for city workers and targeting nonprofits to raise revenue. A summary article in The Daily Star is available here.

The full State of the City speech is available here.

Here is the section of the speech addressing nonprofits:
The Council won’t have many options. It will either have to reduce essential services with related layoffs, or generate additional revenue either through cooperative efforts with the City’s not-for-profit entities or consolidation with the Town and sales tax preemption. There are other ideas: a commuter tax, renegotiation of the City share of County sales tax revenue, or a sales tax increase. These are unpopular concepts, but I would not be acting responsibly if I did not call attention to problems that won’t simply go away, or to potential solutions that must be considered in order to deal with them. With a property tax cap in place, and fees adjusted to rates in comparable communities, the City has virtually no options to generate revenue that don’t involve the cooperation of other entities from the New York State and County legislatures to the local not-for-profit community. We have pushed out the day of reckoning, but it will be upon us nonetheless. The City will face tough choices. Those who care about its condition will have to decide how important it is to them to maintain services in public works, fire, and police at current levels. Our situation is a difficult one, but it is straightforward.