The Buffalo Common Council approved Buffalo Acting Mayor Christopher Scanlon’s 2026 capital budget Tuesday, with a vote of 7 to 1.
The budget will fund infrastructure improvements citywide through the sale of bonds. It includes plans to upgrade parks, community centers, city pools and libraries.
Improvements to public safety departments include $5.2 million for the Buffalo Fire Department - $3.6 million of which will purchase a new engine and a new aerial ladder vehicle. The Buffalo Police Department will see more than $4.2 million in infrastructure upgrades, with $1.5 million of that funding the purchase of new police vehicles.
Before approving the budget, the council shifted some money between budget lines, including taking $150,000 from the capital planning line and putting it toward design planning for Grant Street improvements.
At $94 million, Scanlon’s capital budget is well over Buffalo Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams’ $28 million recommended annual borrowing limit for the city, but the bulk of the borrowing is behalf of Buffalo Public Schools who are not authorized to borrow for capital projects themselves.
Under the plan, the city will go to market for more than $55 million in total bond sales to fund upgrades for 39 separate schools – more than half in the BPS system – including HVAC system improvements, new flooring and roof replacement projects. That spending is 97% reimbursable by the state according to both the Scanlon administration and BPS.
Councilmember Rasheed Wyatt was the only councilmember to vote against the budget, citing Miller-Williams’ report that as of Nov. 14, the city is already approximately $200 million in debt, on which taxpayers pay interest.
“That's a lot of money that we could be utilizing instead of bonding additional dollars that, again, the city is not in a fiscal position to be doing,” Wyatt said.
“I'm being fiscally responsible and not only looking out for the residents in my district but also throughout the city…the council seems to make decisions that go against the people who actually know better than councilmembers. We're not accountants,” he added.
Speaking in the council’s Finance Committee last week, Scanlon assured councilmembers that all listed projects in the 2026 budget are "shovel ready" or require match funding from the city to be completed.
“I don't want to bond out for projects that aren't going to be ready,” he asserted.
But responding to Scanlon’s 2026 plans, Miller-Williams pointed to 31 projects from the last four years funded through bond sales that have “little to no expenditure” – meaning they have made little progress. Finance Committee Chair Mitch Nowakowski, who voted to approve the plans, said that’s “par for the course.”
“Ultimately, these large-scale projects have a lot of moving parts to them. I don't find anything in the comptroller's report to be of significance or a duration of time that hinders the city,” he said.
It’s the second consecutive year that the Scanlon administration has proposed a capital budget exceeding the recommended borrowing by the comptroller, and the city is still entangled in the subsequent fallout. Miller-Williams withheld some bond issuance for the 2025 capital budget over fiscal concerns, leading Scanlon to sue. A judge sided with Scanlon and ruled the comptroller must release all funds signed-off by the common council - a decision she is now appealing.
But after all the public back and forth, Scanlon won’t be the one implementing the plans. That responsibility falls to Sean Ryan, who will be sworn in as Buffalo Mayor on Jan. 1, 2026 after winning the Buffalo mayoral election in November.
