ROCHESTER, N.Y. — City leaders are trying to decide how to spend your tax dollars. Rochester City Council members are questioning the mayor and his team on the 2024-25 budget. 

The 500-page budget book breaks down where the money goes, what’s changing, and what are the mayor’s goals that drive the funding decisions. News10NBC didn’t find any major budget cuts or additions in that book or in Wednesday’s proceedings.

It’s day one of three of digging into the budget with Mayor Malik Evans. He and his team have $697 million to spend next year. They had an $88 million funding gap that they had to close.

Now, the city’s revenue comes from a lot of places, and those sources go up and go down each year. 

For example, the city expects to not make as much from parking garages, but leaders believe people will be buying more, driving up what the city collects in sales tax. 

Federal COVID-19 money has gone down $21.5 million. That means some initiatives it funds, like a senior meal program, will end. 

“In terms of the highlights for this budget: There’s a lot of continuation, nothing is being stopped that was offered in the first two years, and some things are being added,” Evans said.

City Council has several more steps in the vetting process. There’s a lot more questioning and answering that will take place to figure out where these dollars are going, and why.

The Guaranteed Basic Income program is not included in the budget for next year. Evans said when the pilot program ends — which it will in a couple of months — the city doesn’t plan to pay to keep it going or expand it.

But, Mayor Evans did clearly say he supports it, and says the data shows it works. He alluded that there may be some other steps, outside of government funding, in the works to see how the city can keep that going. 

One of the biggest changes is a decrease in ARPA funding. That was COVID-19 relief dollars from the federal government. It was used on programs designed to sunset after they ran out of that money.

Property taxes are going down. Over the winter, many property assessments went up. So naturally, many people panicked that their taxes would follow. But taxes are dropping by 38% for single-family homes, and 28% for commercial properties. So, for homeowners, for every $1,000 your house is worth, you’ll be paying about $6 less this year in taxes.

Property taxes make up roughly a quarter of the city’s entire budget, and this year the city estimates it will collect $156 million, which is a little less than last year. Even if they wanted to, city leaders couldn’t raise those taxes more than 2%, per state law. Evans was clear that was never the goal.

The reassessment process shone a light on how confusing and complicated property taxes are and what exemptions people are eligible for. It shone so much of a light, the city wants to make a new job, just to help people with their property tax exemptions.

“I do think that no matter how, whatever else we do, face time we give to people for office hours for folks — these things are confusing, people don’t like going online. In person, face to face is valuable. We want face to face. Come to City Hall,” said City Councilmember Mitch Gruber.

Budget hearings will continue Thursday and Friday, and there will be some other vetting sessions too.

The actual vote will take place June 18.