Buffalo Mayor-elect Sean Ryan was in Albany Monday speaking to state contacts about Buffalo’s fiscal challenges.
Ryan campaigned on stabilizing the city’s finances, arguing the relationships he forged as a state senator would help. Ryan said he kickstarted those conversations this week --meeting with Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget director.
"We raised a red flag. We let them know the City of Buffalo is in financial distress," Ryan said. "We're going to do everything we can to help ourselves, but we're going to need help from our partners."
The Buffalo Common Council is all too aware of the city’s financial woes, discussing them in successive public meetings for months. After the Finance Committee meeting Tuesday, Council Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope gave a tepid response when asked about the mayor-elect’s meetings with state leaders.
"Thank you?," she offered tentatively. "He's been the senator for 12 years, so I'm hoping that he's been doing that every year for 12 years. But I guess, you know, especially being mayor-elect this is the right time to stress it even more because we are in a financial situation and we're going to need some help."
In fact, Ryan served in the state legislature for 14 years total – 10 in State Assembly and four as a senator. Though the majority leader’s math may be a little off in this case, she was on top of the numbers last week when she and her fellow councilmembers signed-off on the city comptroller’s request to take more than $6 million from the city’s emergency reserves to help plug a $15 million budget deficit for FY 2024-2025.
On top of that, it’s still unclear if the city will break even this year. The jury is still out on plans to sell off city parking ramps and whether there will be enough hotel bed tax to balance the books. With that in mind, the council's Finance Chair Mitch Nowakowski was happy Ryan is advocating for Buffalo before he’s sworn in as mayor on Jan. 1.
"I'm glad he got a head start because there's no way we're going to get out of our financial position in just one calendar year," he said.
Ryan agrees, having presented state players with a three-year plan to Buffalo’s fiscal recovery.
"It took us a very long time to get into this hole, and it's going to take us a few years to get out," Ryan said.
