The 2022 Onondaga County budget comes with a hefty $1.4 billion price tag.
With two costly projects — an aquarium and a sports complex — the budget provides spending on private sector projects in order to increase sales tax.
“We run the county on sales tax, our operations, so we want to make sure we have long-term, sustainable sources of revenue so that we can fund all those great projects everyone likes, as well as plow the roads, the sheriff’s department and all those great things county government does,” Onondaga County Legislature Chairman David Knapp said.
But some question if this is the best way to spend the county’s American Rescue Plan dollars.
“The question here is not whether Syracuse should encourage development,” said Peter Warren, director of research at The Empire Center in Albany. “The question is how to do that.”
The non-partisan, nonprofit think tank promotes public policy reform rooted in free-market principals.
The budget proposes a new property tax rate of $4.93 per thousand, with the county executive touting a 15% decline in property taxes since 2011.
Warren, however, says maybe the county could lower that more.
“Syracuse/Central New York has some of the highest property taxes in the country, and would Syracuse and Onondaga County be better off really doing whatever they can do reduce those property taxes to make it a more encouraging environment for business generally?” asked Warren.
He said he’s not sure an aquarium will draw as many people as other aquariums like in Baltimore and Boston. He says that he’s curious just how many people are going to regularly travel two or more hours to go to the aquarium.
As for the sports complex, Warren says those don’t have a good track record of high returns.
“Leave it to the private market to determine what really is the best, most profitable opportunities that are going to work and successfully bring people to Syracuse to visit that area,” said Warren.
“We’ve talked about them a lot, both with the county executive’s representatives, as well as internally,” Knapp said. “In the past we’ve very often, with large capital projects, taken them outside of the budget and look at them afterward. We may very well be doing that with these because three weeks is a very short time to do proper due diligence on an $85 million aquarium and $25 million sports complex.”
The final budget is due just before Election Day.
