FULTON – As Mayor Deana Michaels and the City of Fulton work on the city’s 2021 budget, which will be voted on December 15, she recently sent a letter to the New York State Budget Director, Robert Mujica, urging him not to cut the city’s state aid.
The letter she sent is as follows:
Dear Mr. Mujica:
On behalf of the residents of the City of Fulton, I urge you to not impose a 20% cut in the City’s state aid including AIM funding due to be paid on December 15, 2020 or CHIPS, PaveNY and EWR.
State funding is crucial in supporting the City to balance our budget, provide much needed and critical services for our residents and to avoid any type of property tax increase next year.
At the beginning of the COVID crisis, I instituted a COVID Financial Oversight Committee to stay in front of the many anticipated changes. While we’re doing our part in cutting spending where we can, improving how we do business more efficiently and always looking for opportunities for improvement, we still need to provide the highest quality of service to our citizens. Any further cut to state aid would harm the residents of Fulton and the positive momentum forward we are seeing in our great City. This is not a result I can or will support.
I understand the State faces its own fiscal challenges and also has to make adjustments. I believe that local municipal aide is absolutely not the place to make those cuts. New York State has more areas of the budget to work with than the City of Fulton and our cuts will be felt more deeply by our residents.
Thank you for understanding how important state aid is to local municipalities and for making every effort not to hold back the 20% we so desperately need.
Sincerely,
Deana M. Michaels, Mayor
City of Fulton
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