City Council President Eugene Jankowski is keeping his fingers crossed that Batavia’s financial picture will become much brighter over the next year.
Speaking to The Batavian following tonight’s City Council meeting, Jankowski didn’t hide his disappointment (see main story) but is encouraged by several state-funded Downtown Revitalization Initiative projects that are finally coming to fruition.
“We were caught off guard this year, and we really didn’t have time to do anything other than patchwork,” he said. “Next year, we’ll have 12 months to plan ahead for not having that money in the budget and hopefully we can find some real things that we can trim that aren’t going to cause any major impact on the services or doing business with our core values of police, fire, public works and snowplowing and various things like that that are important."
Jankowski said voting to override the tax cap and for the large tax increase was “one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make as a council member.”
“But I understand the whole process of it and I understand why we’re doing it, and it’s the best we can do at this point – and it’s still not good enough in my mind – and we better fix it for next year for sure.”
He said having the Batavia Development Corporation in the mix is essential to the City’s economic success.
“Our goal, and that’s the big value of having BDC, because they are generating development and they are managing all of these DRI projects, expediting them and fast-tracking them to get them started,” he said. “When those buildings – Save-A-Lot building, Ellicott Place, Ellicott Station – the Savarino property – become up and running, some of them may have tax breaks, but they’re not at zero. They will be paying – in Savarino’s case I believe it’s approximately 30 percent in the first year.”
Jankowski foresees a great deal of income generated by converting the empty lot into a multimillion dollar piece of property.
“That will help us, but we have to get it built and we have to do something in the meantime while it’s being built as it will take a couple years to get done.”
He said he is banking on investors to step up to the plate.
“The other DRI projects are the same way. When people invest two million dollars into their property, it’s going to increase their value. It just happens. So, that will increase that commercial tax income and hopefully will bring in more commerce, which will increase the sales tax revenue,” he said.
The council president said he wished the City could have had one more year of VLT money to have that “cushion” while the DRI projects are under way.
Despite the current setback, he said he has to keep focusing on the future.
“I’m hoping that projected income is going to help and I hope these projects get off the ground when they need to and I hope that the governor could restore some of that money back as well,” he said. “If all that combination happens, we’re going to be in much better shape the next year. Otherwise, (there are) a lot of cuts we’ve got to think about for next year.”
