OGDENSBURG, New York (WWNY) – Just because the proposed Ogdensburg budget doesn’t include staffing cuts in 2023, outgoing City Manager Stephen Jellie says cuts in future years are inevitable.
The proposed budget holds the line on taxes, but now has a deficit of $3.5 million. More than half of the funds Ogdensburg collects goes to public safety.
While Jellie isn’t proposing a balanced budget, he is saying cuts have to happen in order to keep the city from going bankrupt.
“What you don’t cut this year, you’ll cut next year. What you don’t cut next year, you’ll cut the year after. I have reduced 30 positions in two years in the city of Ogdensburg and yet we are still a deficit. That is the black and white example that our costs are rising far and away faster than our revenue,” he said.
Jellie made the proposed budget a month sooner than usual in order to give city councillors a glimpse of what’s to come and think about ways to deal with it.
Jellie is leaving the city manager’s post on November 4 and going to take a new fire chief’s job in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
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