Author: John Kaufmann

Coming off their third consecutive major election loss, the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee has established a new low in terms of competence and community relations.

The Open Meeting Closed

An extremely unflattering front page story in the November 16, 2025, edition of the Daily Gazette, documented the debacle that unfolded at the November 15, 2025, Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee meeting.

The previous week, committee chair Otis Maxwell emailed the committee, advising them that the meeting would address the results of the recent election where the committee’s nominees suffered significant losses and be open to the community.

Some days later, he wrote to the committee again, reversing his earlier email and advising that the meeting would not be open to non-committee members. Some members of the committee complained that it was too late to close the meeting, as non-members attending might not be aware that they had been uninvited.

Approximately 30 members of the committee attended in person (a full committee would have 50 members), a handful had proxies from other members, and at least one person (Dillon Moran) participated via Zoom.

Approximately twenty additional people attended, including members of the press and students from Skidmore College Professor Bob Turner’s class on local politics.

Prior to the meeting, Maxwell had falsely telegraphed that the executive committee would be resigning at the meeting. It generated a rumor that had spread quickly. At the meeting, before it was closed to the public, Maxwell reinforced this narrative.

In a classic case of unintended irony, Maxwell told those present that “I and the executive committee acknowledge there are broad calls for a change in leadership. We hear and accept that message (emphasis added).”

As documented in the Daily Gazette article, after the public and press were escorted out, Maxwell told those present that he and the executive committee had no intention of stepping down. Maxwell did entertain a motion directing the executive committee to resign. The motion failed in a close vote (16 v 20). Despite the conflict of interest, most of the executive committee voted against the motion. If the executive committee members had demonstrated ethics and refrained from voting, the measure would have prevailed.

The result of this foolishness was a news story in a variety of publications that only added to Maxwell’s and his committee’s dubious reputation.

Before the public was removed, newly elected Commissioner of Public Works BK Keramati rose and told the committee that he stood behind his controversial mailers and that they were factually accurate. This was interesting because during the previous two weeks, Keramati had faced withering criticism for the sensational misinformation he had used in his campaign. In contrast to his remarks at the meeting, he had defended himself by expressing regret for his mailers.

Maxwell then introduced Achim Bergmann. Bergmann, in addition to being a member of the committee, is a professional campaign consultant and was engaged by the committee, along with several endorsed candidates, to assist in running Democratic campaigns.

Bergmann’s analysis was purely statistical, and it concluded that One Saratoga had been instrumental in the defeat of most of the committee’s endorsed candidates.

Bergmann finished his presentation by asking if anyone had any questions. One of the non-committee members responded. She wondered whether the discussion would include an assessment of whether any of the candidates endorsed by the committee had posed a problem. When she noted that she had voted for the One Saratoga line because of concerns about candidates endorsed by the city Democratic Committee, Otis Maxwell interrupted her. In harsh terms, he told her that she was not a member of the committee and that she was out of order speaking. It was apparent that he was committed to silencing any criticism of his committee’s candidates, even if it meant alienating the members of the public and press in attendance.

Maxwell then called for a vote to have anyone present who was not a committee member leave. The vote was close. According to the Daily Gazette, the vote was 19 in favor and 17 against. The press and the other non-members exited.

“It’s deeply disappointing and unnerving that my constituents, campaign team, and press were thrown out of the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee meeting,” said committee member, former chair, and City Supervisor-elect Sarah Burger.

According to the Gazette, Skidmore professor Bob Turner told the paper:

“My students were kind of struck by being asked to leave, they say they were kind of rubbed the wrong way by that,” Turner said.

“Here’s this opportunity to listen to people who really care,” Turner added.

So Much For The Alleged Change In Leadership

Following the failed vote to remove members of the executive committee, Maxwell announced that the Democratic Party of Saratoga Springs would organize a listening tour to solicit community input. This prompted a wag to observe, “There already was a listening tour and the message was a ringing rejection. It was called an election.”

This blog has documented the numerous missteps in handling the city’s finances by Minita Sanghvi since she became the Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Finance.

Under the city charter, Sanghvi is responsible for preparing the city’s budget each year, which must be adopted by November 30. As this deadline approaches, Sanghvi’s years of mismanaging the city’s finances have finally brought the city to the verge of a financial crisis. How severe a crisis it is, even now, is hard to determine, though, as the financial indicators Sanghvi should be providing are missing.

One of the key documents that should have been an important tool for the Commissioner to use in understanding the city’s financial condition and planning for the 2026 budget was due September 30. As of the time of this blog’s posting, the audit has finally been placed on the agenda for the November 18, 2025, meeting; however, the link to the actual audit included in the agenda does not work.

The tardiness of this audit is not new for Sanghvi. The 2023 audit also missed the September 30, 2024, deadline and was not submitted until November 7. This was coincidentally only days after the November 2024 election in which Sanghvi was running for the State Senate. As the audit included damaging items regarding her handling of the city’s finances, it is no small wonder that she delayed releasing it beyond the required date and after the election.

In addition to tardiness, Sanghvi is criticized in the audit for failing to follow “accounting practices generally accepted in the United States.” She blamed this problem on “a personnel vacancy.”

In her response to the audit (below), Sanghvi admits that she had failed to meet the “…deadline for the submission of the Single Audit.”

You would think that, having been criticized in the 2023 audit for being late, she would be particularly diligent about ensuring the timeliness of the 2024 audit release. You would be wrong. She is late for the second consecutive year.

I am unaware of any previous Finance Commissioner failing to submit the audit on time, let alone failing to do so twice.

I contacted Commissioner Sanghvi, asking why, yet again, the audit is so late this year. In a phone conversation, she blamed the problem on the alleged failure of the Mayor’s office and the Department of Public Works.

I contacted Deputy Mayor JoAnne Kiernan and DPW Commissioner Chuck Marshall regarding Sanghvi’s allegation. Both officials told me that Sanghvi had not contacted them about any missing information.

I then sent the following email to Sanghvi, requesting any documentation that she or her staff had provided to the executive staff in either the Mayor’s office or the DPW regarding the urgent need for missing information.

The Email

John Kaufmann <	Tue, Nov 11, 7:00 PM (3 days ago)
to Minita, Tim, Dillon, John, Charles.Marshall

  Minita:

Thank you for returning my call.  As you are aware, we discussed the city’s lack of an audit.  BST, our auditor, was required to provide the city with its audit by September 30.  In turn, your office was required to submit the audit to the city council and the public by November 1.   

You blamed the failure to meet the city’s deadlines on the mayor’s office and the Department of Public Works. 

On September 25, you emailed DPW about missing information.  They informed you that the information you were looking for had been uploaded to a folder shared by DPW and Finance on August 7.  You had the information. If there was any confusion about the information, please let me know why you waited until September 25, five days before the audit was supposed to be completed, to contact DPW?

Regarding the mayor’s office, you never contacted the mayor or his deputy about this issue.  Apparently, someone from your office has contacted the planning department regarding a matter involving grants.  (In the previous audit, you were criticized for your failure to properly manage the fiscal elements of these grants.)  Notably, your office did not raise the issue until mid-October.  As the audit was required to be completed by September 30, can you explain why this was not addressed earlier?  If this was pressing and not being done, why didn’t you email the mayor or his deputy?  Please provide any documentation regarding the attempts made by your department to obtain this information.  

Audits are at the heart of accountability and of transparency. What’s most alarming is that you do not seem particularly concerned about the failure of Finance to provide this audit, which should have been available before the election.  Given the criticisms in the auditor’s 2023 report, one must wonder whether the 2024 audit will contain unflattering findings.

My key question to you is why you did not advise the council that you were unable to meet your obligation under the charter to provide them with this vital document?

Radio Silence

As usual, I received no response. I submit that there was no response because Sanghvi has no documentation. She is guilty of an inept attempt to cover up the failure in her office. I do not think it is unreasonable to consider that she has suppressed the latest 2024 audit report because it would reveal more problems in her office, particularly in a year when she was running for Supervisor.

Sanghvi’s October Surprise

As the Commissioner of Finance, Sanghvi is responsible for monitoring the city’s spending.

In May, the city agreed to fund RISE (the provider of a homeless shelter for the city) for approximately half a million dollars. Sanghvi not only voted for the resolution, but she waxed on about the value of their service for our city.

In October, Sanghvi presented a budget that cut not only the funding for RISE, but also for all the not-for-profits the city had been supporting for years, including the Senior Center. The reason? The city was suddenly facing a $3,500,000.00 deficit for the current fiscal year, which is not yet over.

How could she not have seen this coming?

By May, when she supported spending $500,000.00 on RISE, she should have been aware of the looming budget problems.

It is a testament to her mismanagement that, up until October, when she was finally required to prepare the budget for next year, she said nothing at the Council table about the financial threat facing the city.

It is worth noting that Sanghvi was warned last fall, during the preparation of the 2025 budget, that her fiscal assumptions were overly optimistic. At the time, Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll urged her to raise the city tax rate to 2%, as allowed by state law. Although she had raised taxes her previous two years in office, in 2024, she was running for State Senate and refused.

As has become painfully obvious, her budget for 2025 badly underestimated expenses and overestimated income. This was not her first time doing this.

As this blog has documented over the last four years, Sanghvi is far more interested in drama at the Council table than in devoting the very demanding time required to fully understand the city’s finances.

Understanding Just How Bad Sanghvi’s Budgeting Is

Under our charter, the Finance Commissioner is responsible for preparing the city’s annual budget. This budget is intended to be the result of thorough analysis and consultations with other city departments. While it is expected to be revised once it is proposed to the Council, it is intended to be a serious document that the Finance Commissioner would want to be adopted as is. This is because, unless a majority of the Council overrules the Commissioner’s proposal, it is automatically the city’s budget for the following year.

Sanghvi’s desire to defund all the not-for-profits (RISE, the senior citizens’ center, Judge Vero’s outreach/homeless court, and even school crossing guards) was supposed to reflect her determination that while these organizations were valuable, other city needs would take precedence.

Coincidentally, in an election year, these major high-profile nonprofit organizations that were cut are funded by the Mayor’s office, and these cuts were often portrayed as coming from the Mayor, not Sanghvi.

According to reports, although the public has yet to see the changes, Sanghvi has reportedly now restored these cuts.

Sanghvi Blames Other Departments For The Failure Of Her Department and Gibberish and Confusion Over What The City’s Reserves Are

As of this Friday, November 14, Sanghvi was still not taking responsibility for the late audit and continued to demonstrate a fundamental ignorance of the city’s finances.

At the pre-agenda meeting on Friday morning, Sanghvi again blamed unnamed departments for the audit delay. She informed her colleagues that her office had met with the auditors in mid-October to discuss the remaining information they needed. As the audit was supposed to be completed by the end of September, she self-documents the tardiness of her own office in completing the audit.

In a budget hearing that same day, Sanghvi was asked to provide the Council with accurate information on the city’s fund balance. The “Unassigned Fund Balance” is the technical term for the city’s reserves. In addition to raising taxes, one way to address the city’s deficit is to tap into its reserve fund. It is obviously important to know the size of the reserve in order to determine how it may be used to address the city’s deficit.

In this clip, Commissioner Coll attempts to determine from Sanghvi how much the city has in reserve to address the proposed budget shortfalls.

The Finance Commissioner serves as the chief financial officer (CFO) of the city. It’s hard to believe, as documented in the following video, Sanghvi was unable to answer Commissioner Coll’s repeated requests regarding the city’s reserves to address the budget for next year. As her frustrated response indicated, she did not know, and this is particularly glaring because, given the repeated requests for this number, she should have had the figure readily available.

Further, note how she distances herself from her staff in the video clip. When trying to explain what the city’s reserves are, she notes that the numbers she is getting are from her staff referring to her deputy and budget director as “they” as her budget director is shaking her head. So these are not numbers that she has analyzed and that constitute her financial analysis. Apparently, she is unable to read these reports on her own and adopt them as her own.

We Still Don’t Know

Sanghvi has insisted that the budget be adopted at the November 18 meeting, as she needs to travel to India. That is just two days away. The budget was supposed to be attached to the meeting agenda on the city’s website on Friday. It was not. There is a hearing on the budget before the meeting. How is the public supposed to thoughtfully speak on the budget when they do not have access to it?

I believe we will not know the actual financial condition of the city until JoAnne Kiernan, who has extensive accounting experience, takes over as the new Commissioner of Finance.

Blogger, Brian Wager, Jane Weihe

After thirty years with the city’s Department of Public Works, Brian Wager retires next Saturday.

Those of you who use the transfer station to dispose of your garbage and recycling, have probably been assisted by Brian. Always patient and good-humored, Brian was always available to give a helping hand.

When you see Brian, thank him for his service and wish him well in his retirement.

This is a mailer BK Keramati sent to Saratoga Springs voters.

Up until he began his campaign for Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Public Works, my encounters with BK Keramati over the years had always been pleasant.

While I supported his opponent, the current Commissioner, Chuck Marshall, I believed Mr. Keramati did not have the history of toxic behavior that other candidates endorsed by the local Democrats this year had. I assumed, therefore, that if elected, he could be counted on to interact civilly with his fellow Council members even if he did not always agree with them.

I was unprepared then for his toxic mailings and social media assaults on his opponent. His campaign became just another example of the ugly and vituperative behavior that the city has endured from the Democratic leadership over the last four years. What is sad is that, given Keramati’s reputation up until this point and his vigorous door-to-door campaign, he might well have won without stooping to this kind of dirty politics. Instead, he focused on false statements and assumptions to run a campaign that essentially was an attempt at the character assassination of his opponent.

The Water Report

One of Keramati’s main themes was to accuse Chuck Marshall of “hiding” a study of Loughberry Lake. Many of the issues with this aspect of Mr. Keramati’s disturbing campaign were explored in an earlier article.

Suffice it to say that since Chuck Marshall immediately gave BK the report when asked and without making him FOIL for it (something that would have meant BK would have not gotten the report until after the election), it is difficult to understand how Mr. Keramati could, with any integrity, describe Marshall as being “caught covering up a serious report on our water quality” as he does in his mailer.

Fooling The Public

To provide credibility to his accusations, Keramati doctored an image of the Saratogian Newspaper (and others)in his mailers. This headline never existed. The tear at the bottom of the image was meant to convey authenticity.

An Assault On Marshall’s Integrity

Chuck received a considerable amount of money from, among others, individuals in the real estate industry.

BK could have legitimately pointed this out and raised questions about the extent to which they might influence Chuck’s tenure should he have won.

Instead, BK’s mailers went over the top, asserting that “he (Chuck) does what he is told” and he is “a tool of corporate interests and puts their priorities ahead of the people.”

Keramati provides no examples of Chuck having used his position to aid donors.

To the contrary, Chuck has had the opposite reputation as Planning Board Chair, where he was known for creating an environment of inclusion and respect, working with a board of diverse people, both politically and socially.

I recently spoke to Bill McTygue, who served on the Planning Board with Chuck. Bill had been on the Democratic Committee and probably supported Keramati, yet he was quite complimentary of Chuck’s leadership. I asked him specifically whether he observed any effort by Chuck to manipulate the board in favor of any developers. Bill said “no.” Bill observed that Chuck’s focus was on building a consensus among the board to make decisions.

So what does it say about Keramati’s character that he would tell voters that Marshal is a guy who “does what he’s told”?

Likewise, Keramati cites a donation Elise Stefanik made to Chuck’s campaign as evidence that “Chuck is a political partisan who goes along with his MAGA Republican leaders…putting politics ahead of the people.” Keramati again cites no evidence of this and appears uninterested in acknowledging that Chuck has publicly stated he did not vote for Donald Trump.

The Chuck Marshall I Wish People Had An Opportunity To Know.

Here is an anecdote that may help people to understand what kind of person Chuck Marshall is in comparison with the characterization of him put forward by Mr. Keramati.

When Chuck defeated Hank Kuczyinski, he inherited Michele Hill-Davis as his executive assistant, whom Kuczynski had hired. In addition to having been selected by his opponent, Ms. Hill-Davis is an active committee member of the city’s Democratic Committee.

I know for a fact that quite a few people told Chuck he needed to replace her. They argued that as his executive assistant, she would be privy to all the goings-on in his office. In effect, she would be a spy.

In classic Chuck style, he refused. He said he would not fire anyone without giving them a chance to demonstrate their ability to perform the work. Ms. Hill-Davis is still his executive assistant.

Unlike Keramati, Marshall’s campaign also reflected his character. It was positive without a breath of attack and recrimination.

Hope?

Keramati worked closely with Gordon Boyd, who energetically echoed and amplified Keramati’s campaign claims on his Facebook page, and Achim Bergmann, a professional political operative with national campaign experience and a member of the local Democratic committee. Both men BK chose to work with have a history of running toxic campaigns.

One can only hope that Keramati will show more civility and integrity at the Council table than he did in his campaign.

This blog has previously reported on the two years during which Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran promised numerous dates for deploying the Short Term Rental (STR) portal, which property owners can use to register.

According to the timestamp on his campaign Facebook page tonight (November 3), on the eve of the election, Moran claims that he deployed the software last Friday (October 31) and that his office is already processing applications.

This is a screenshot from Moran’s campaign Facebook page. The red line was added.

The problem is that, according to both the available documents and his remarks at the October 31 pre-agenda meeting, it was not up on Friday.

In this clip from the Friday meeting, he tells his colleagues that it would take twenty-four hours for the vendor to deploy it. He then says, presumably because the next day is the weekend, it would not be up until Tuesday.

So if it takes twenty-four hours and if he advised his colleagues of this on Friday morning, it could not possibly have been available that night.

In addition, this time stamped city website page from Saturday morning, November 1, shows that the page had not been updated since August,

Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran has promoted himself as the successful architect of short-term rental management. In fact, his campaign mailing focuses on this as one of his main achievements.

A casual scrutiny of what he has actually done and not done reveals a very different story.

Moran had the city purchase the software for a portal to be used by short-term rental owners to register with the city. It was purchased on February 6, 2024. The cost for using the software for the first year was $56,000.00. It was not deployed, so the city wasted the money for that year. On February 6, 2025, the city paid for the next year in the amount of $55,000.00. By his own admission, the portal will not be functional until the end of the year, so that is another $55,000.00 wasted.

During this period, he successfully received support from the city’s civil service to hire an additional staff member to handle STRs. As the software has not been deployed, hiring anyone was premature. He also successfully raised the salaries of employees in his office because the alleged workload for STR was added to their responsibilities.

Accounts employee X was hired on July 26, 2023, at a salary of $66,668.00. On February 20,2024, her salary was increased to $83,380.00 to compensate her for her additional duties with STR. The new budget crafted by Minita Sanghvi raises her salary to $92,687.00

Moran has routinely announced at City Council meetings one date after another that the STR software would be deployed. In fact, on October 20, 2025, at the League of Women Voters forum, he announced it would be up the next day. Of course it was not. The latest date he has announced is now December 31, 2025.

There is further confusion because the annual registration date, which involves a fee, is in June. Therefore, if the owner of an STR registers on January 1, 2026, (it remains to be seen if the portal will be operational), they will be required to register at the full rate for a year, with their registration expiring in June.

There is also the problem that these STRs must be inspected by the city, and it remains to be seen when this will happen and how long it will take.

Many of the folks with short-term rentals are, not surprisingly, frustrated and angry at the mess that Moran has created.

This is yet another example of Moran’s desire for headlines and his utter failure to actually manage.

The Saratoga Springs Democratic Party has sent out their final campaign mailer. Interestingly, it doesn’t tout their platform or even mention who their candidates are. No, the message the local Dems want to leave their audience with is its phony claim that One Saratoga is a tool of the MAGA GOP. This is the local Dems oft repeated big beautiful lie that they hope will win them this election. The Dems do not seem to realize that this kind of over-the-top attack only serves to damage their local committee’s reputation and their endorsed candidates. If they would lie so blatantly in this kind of mailing, how can people trust what their candidates will say if they are elected/re-elected?

The best antidote to this kind of campaigning is to share with the public who One Saratoga is. So here are two members of One Saratoga who the local Dems want you to believe are really MAGA operatives. You decide.

Courtney DeLeonardis, Chair of One Saratoga, Addresses The Voters

Jane Weihe, Campaign Assistant, One Saratoga Addresses The Voters

[I received this essay from Lew Benton. This year was not the first time Sanghvi has mishandled the budget process. Lew goes back to 2023 to detail how Sanghvi failed to follow best practices and charter requirements in putting together the 2024 budget. He notes also her penchant for consistently overestimating revenues and underestimating expenditures which has contributed to today’s dilemma. ]

Why Make the Proposed City Budget Opaque?

Perhaps some of those who attempted to review the City’s October 27 amended Comprehensive Budget, and compare and contrast it to the Finance Commissioner’s initial October 3 presentation, came away as perplexed as Alan Turing in his early efforts to crack the Enigma Code.

If you did, you were not alone.  Unlike all previous City budgets, the proposed amended 2024 budget does not adhere to the format required by the City Charter.  

Rather than, as outlined in the Charter,  follow a standardized budget format that  employs “ …  the most feasible combination of expenditure classifications by funds, organization unit, program, purpose, or activity and object,” all proposed expenditure lines are lumped together, not disaggregated by function.

The table below presents the City Attorney’s Budget as it appeared in the proposed 2024 Comprehensive spending plan dated October 3, 2023.  The expenditure budget for each of the departments under the mayor’s administrative control follows the same format, as does each organizational unit or function in Finance, Accounts, Public Safety and Public Works.

     

CITY ATTORNEY’S OFFICE                    

PERSONAL SERVICE              2022          2023          2023         2023         2023               2024

                                                              Original       Adopted     Revised     Actual     Projected   Comprehensive

  

A301142151047 FOIL OFFIC             .00             .00                .00             .00            .00                  .00

A301142151090 CITY ATTY         89,493       93,600      93,600    71,742      93,857           93,857

A301142151110 ASST ATTY              .00             .00             82,548        57,743      82,549         105,276

A301142151117 AST CITY A              .00            .00                .00             .00           .00                 .00

A301142151276 EXASSISTAN    53,496      54,566        57,297    43,796      57,297           59,550

         

A301142158030 SS CITY PO       10,913       16,689        23,004    13,059      17,878           19,789

                    

TOTAL  PERSONAL SER VICES        153,902      164,855      256,449       186,342    251,581        278,473

    

EQUIPMENT AND CAPITAL OUTLAY      

 A301142252200 OFFICE EQ        1,360.         00               .00       .00            .00                 .00

TOTAL EQUIPMENT AND CAPITAL       1,360.         00               .00              .00            .00                 .00

 CONTRACTED SERVICES                

A301142454110 OFFICE SUP                3,019        700                   700            559         700                  700

A301142454120 POSTAGE                       346        350                   355            355         355                  350

A301142454250 CONF REG                     509      1,500                  870            107         870                  .00

A301142454440 BOOKS                        1,195      1,300               2,044            943      1,687                1,300

A301142454671 PHONE FAX                     31        .00                    216            170         216                  .00

A301142454720 PROF SER                92,816     20,000            56,250       33,049     92,312              20,000

A301142454740 SC EQUIP                   2,163      2,050               2,050          1,335      2,050                2,050

A301142454745 LEGAL LIAB                  .00          .00                   .00              .00          .00                   .00

A301142454760 LEGAL                           500        750                   750             500        750                   750

TOTAL CONTRACTED SERVICES   100,581     26,650            63,236        37,020     98,941              25,150

TOTAL CITY ATTORNEY                 255,844    191,505          319,686     223,363    350,523            303,623

This format allows ease of access and review of the proposed budgets of each city function, identification of and individual expenditure for each title, non-personal costs and costs of associated contractual expenses.  Further, this format – required by Charter law – shows the total costs for each expenditure classification.

In this example, it is noted that the Council has significantly overspent  the “PROF SER” line   this fiscal year and last.  This should beg the question of why over $90,000 has been spent in 2022 and 2023 on outside legal services while only $20,000 was initially budgeted.  And why only $20,000 is proposed for 2024.  

Is this an anomaly?  Were there unanticipated extra-legal services in 2022 and 2023 that will not be necessary in 2024?  Of course many other similar observations are made in the review of essentially all departmental budgets.

This required budget presentation is transparent, relatively simple and allows and encourages understanding.  The amended budget is opaque.  

Without explanation, however, the proposed amended 2024 Comprehensive Budget is presented in an entirely different form.

For example, the several “department” expenditure lines under the auspices of the mayor are simply thrown together, co-mingled.  The reviewer is left to divine which line items are part of which of the mayor’s several department budgets: i.e., City Attorney, Planning, Building, Human Resources, etc.  

The same is true for Finance, Accounts, Public Safety and Public Works.  In the later two, Public Safety and Public Works, the task of meaningful, comprehensive review of the budgets of discrete functions: i.e., fire services, policing, EMS, etc., requires substantial investment in time and enough working knowledge to assign each line item to its respective agency.

In the Mayor’s proposed budget there are at least seven expenditure lines  alone labeled “Professional Services” but the only way to determine which department the lines apply to requires a time consuming and tedious matching of account numbers.

Why Finance elected to abandon a budget format that has always been relatively easy to read and understand for one significantly more difficult to puzzle out is itself a conundrum.  Finance must be required to reformat the proposed amended budget before its  November 28 hearing.  

Other Thoughts on the Proposed 2024 City Budget. Certain Revenues 

and Expenditures

The proposed 2024 City Comprehensive Budget as presently constructed is concerning.   It will require significant amendments if operating deficits are to be avoided next year.

First and foremost, it includes unfavorable budget variances in both major revenue and expenditure accounts.    

This comes on the heels of a 2023 budget, the first prepared and adopted by current City Council members, that preordained the 2024 proposal’s many overstated anticipated revenues and, in some cases, grossly underfunded expenditure lines.  

The proposed 2024 operating budget is not in balance and must not be adopted until it is.  To bring it into balance will require a more realistic examination of several accounts, including those referenced below, and the political will to act.  

No doubt, the lack of institutional knowledge and limited understanding of how this government functions on the part of a Council made of first term members can, in part, serve to temper the inadequacies in the 2023 budget.  But failure to recognize and correct them going forward is unacceptable and a violation of the fiduciary’s responsibility.  

Attempting to transfer blame to those who had no hand in the adoption of the 2023 budget or the preparation of the 2024 plan, citing recent high inflation and the dearth of new revenue streams for the city’s fiscal difficulties rings hollow. 

All local governments are faced with the same head winds.  It might be more honest  to acknowledge that hiring additional non-essential employees was not prudent, that budgeting non-existent revenues e and that deliberately low balling major expenditures invites deficit spending.

Following are examples of the unfavorable variances in the proposed 2024 operating budget.  There  are, to be sure, others.

Revenues

In Finance, $850,000 in Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue is proposed for 2024.  This is over $100,000 more than was actually realized in FY 2022 and over $600,000 more than has been received to date this year.  

The 2023 budget includes a non-existent ‘Cannabis Tax’ revenue of $250,000.  The proposed 2024 budget carries that same amount forward.  Potential first time revenues  such as this one do not usually meet expectations.  And by prematurely including the revenue in the 2023 budget only added to a negative revenue variance

The proposed Mortgage Tax revenue for 2024 is $1.5 million compared to the $933,400 collected to date this year.  The $933,400 is far below the $2.05 million budget.  

Mortgage markets have been depressed even here in Saratoga Springs by Fed attempts to reign in inflation.  Even the $1.5 million proposed seems unrealistic.

The Mayor’s budget is ripe with unfavorable 2024 revenue variances.  The Building Permit account carries a proposed $700,000 revenue even in the face of a major decline in permit revenues this year.  To date Building Permit revenue is listed by Finance at $352,520 with only $400,000 projected by the end of the FY.  This is $300,000 less than was budgeted.  Artificially inflating anticipated revenue only increases the structural deficit.

In recent years this revenue has been strong but, at least for the short term, it is most unlikely that in one year that revenue will increase 75%, from $400,000 to $700,000.

Likewise, Planning Board fees are unrealistically overstated.  Actual 2022 Planning Board revenue was $122,820.  Still, this revenue line was increased to $200,000 in the adopted 2023 budget but is now projected by Finance to fall $35,000 short.  

Now, in spite of the anticipated 2023 unfavorable variance, Finance has increased the line to $250,000 for 2024.  Perhaps an explanation for this doubling of the 2022 revenue and increasing the anticipated 2023 collections by $85,000 in the 2024 budget is in order. 

Other revenue lines in the Mayor’s budget that are suspect include Insurance Reimbursement, from  -0-  this year to $125,000 next year. 

The Public Safety revenue budget includes a $300,000 increase in Ambulance Transportation charges over the $2 million projected to be realized by the end of FY-23 and is over $500,000 more than actually collected in 2022.

Unless the fee structure has been significantly increased this revenue line is likely to fall far short of the $2.3 million in the proposed 2024 budget.

Parking Enforcement revenue is now anticipate to be $462,0000 this year, down almost $80,000 from the $540,000 budgeted and $38,000 less than the $500,000 in the 2024 proposal.  

Operating Expenditures

The operating budget also includes many likely unfavorable variances.  Just as overestimating revenues in the actual 2003 and proposed 2024 budgets contributed to the city’s present fiscal dilemma, so have what appears to be unfavorable variances in the operating budgets.

In the 2023 Public Safety operating budget the City Council included $190,000 for Fire Fighter Overtime.  Finance now projects that by the end of the fiscal year $533,500 will be spent, this is an astronomical increase of $343,500 over the amount budgeted.

Similarly the Firefighter Compensation Time budget is anticipated to be overspent.  Only $190,000 was earmarked for this line in the 2023 budget but $563,000 is anticipated to be spent by year’s end, a $373.000 overage.

So too is the proposed 2024 Police Overtime and Compensation Time lines grossly underfunded.  Finance proposes to appropriate the rather odd amount of $263,637 for Compensation Time vis a’vis the $483,570 spent in 2022 and the projected $450,000 in 2023.  The 2024 OT line is set at $325,000 against the $507,505 expended in 2022 and  the estimated $450,000 this year.

In the aggregate, Finance is proposing 2024 Police and Fire Fighter OT and Comp Time expenditures totaling $1,338,637 although corresponding 2022 costs were $1,498,271 and projected 2023 expenditures are $1,981,000.

While there may have been unique circumstances that have resulted in higher than normal Police and Firefighter OT and Compensation Time expenditures this year, the proposed 2024 appropriations are well below what will be needed to avoid the necessity of transferring large amounts during the course of FY 24.  

In the Mayor’s office $20,000 was budgeted for outside legal counsel this year but Finance projects that over $92,000 will be spent.  Only $20,000 is earmarked for next year.  Now it appears that yet more outside legal services will be retained to investigate an offending mail.   This is madness. 

These references are not all inclusive.  There are many more questions to be asked and answered.  Why, for example has Code Blue shelter support been cut from the budget.  

There is time to prepare a more realistic 2024 operating budget.  I hope the City Council will do so lest the new Council be bequeathed an extraordinary fiscal challenge.

Lew Benton

Just A Few Highlights From Minita Sanghvi’s 2026 proposed budget.

• Senior citizen center support = zeroed out
• Funding for Judge Vero’s homeless (outreach court) = zeroed out
• Crossing guards for our city schools = zeroed out
• Funding for RISE for the homeless = zeroed out
• Most part-time staff and seasonal staff = zeroed out
• Money for training the planning staff or the building department = zeroed out
• Secretary for the planning board = zeroed out
• The overtime budget for special events = zeroed out
• Uniforms: funding cut from $57,000.00 to $15,000.00, leaving inadequate funds to meet contractual obligations to the union.

Reader, You Were Warned

Under the commission form of government, the Commissioner of Finance is responsible for crafting the budget for the following year. Unless a majority of the Council votes to overrule the Finance Commissioner to amend the budget, the original budget becomes the final budget.

As should be obvious, preparing budgets requires a solemn commitment on the part of the Finance Commissioner to be deeply informed about city finances and to oversee the collection of key information. This is an enormously demanding process.

I have repeatedly warned that Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi has been derelict in her duties in running her office. What motivated her was performing in the drama at Council meetings in her role as Commissioner. She has been uninterested in or unwilling to take on the highly demanding job of managing the city’s finances.

Sanghvi’s automatic email response informs whoever has written to her that the Commissioner of Finance position is part-time and that, if the correspondence is important, contact Sanghvi’s Deputy. This is truly emblematic of how she views her job and how we got here.

The critical issue is that unless a majority of Council members agree to a different budget, the one crafted by the Finance Office will be the budget for the following year. This is why crafting a good budget in the first place is so important.

Before Commissioner Sanghvi, the budget was crafted over many months. The Budget Director would meet with the Deputies and their Commissioners to review what they were spending money on, their contractual obligations to vendors and city unions, and the legal limits on the respective departments’ obligations. There was also an analysis by the Budget Director working with the Deputies to project potential revenue for their respective departments. The finance people would also correlate their findings with the budgets from previous years. All of this required multiple follow-up meetings over a protracted period.

Beginning in October, budget workshops were held for each department. The purpose of these budget workshops traditionally was to fine-tune a thoroughly prepared budget. Not with Commissioner Sanghvi; her colleagues at the Council table received a rudimentary document listing slashed items meant to balance the city’s revenues with its expenses.

As it takes a majority vote to amend Sanghvi’s budget, the other Commissioners begin scrambling to negotiate not only with her but also with each other to secure a majority to fix her mess.

Basically, this budget is being written largely from scratch. That is how, in this case, the city got a budget with no money for school crossing guards.

Taking Care of Herself and Her Friend Dillon Moran

What Sanghvi has done over the past three years is to arbitrarily cut items and exaggerate income until she arrives at a budget that appears to balance with the anticipated city income.

These policies have reflected who her allies are.

Consider this chart that shows how much she anticipated each department would raise in income to contribute to her budget. It documents not only her favoritism but also how little she understood the alleged revenue streams for her department and Dillon Moran’s.

For example, her 2024 budget projected that the short-term rental program in the Accounts Department would raise $250,000.00. It raised zero. It budgeted $250,000.00 in cannabis tax revenue. It raised zero. (Not coincidentally, both these projections came from her ally, Dillon Moran)

During her first years in office, when her Democratic party ran the Council, her generosity was breathtaking. Anything that her colleagues, Ron Kim, Jim Montagnino, Jason Golub, and Moran, wanted was no problem.

During this period, Sanghvi showered repeated bonuses on their deputies and funded numerous new positions in their departments and in hers.

Magical Thinking Instead Of Real Analysis

Commissioner Sanghvi’s approach to budgeting is more about chaos than rigorously crafting how the city should spend its money.

This is no exaggeration; it is the grim reality. Each fall, as the budget was coming due, Sanghvi would throw together budgets that ignored contracts, state law, and the lobbying of her fellow Commissioners. If you watch the budget workshops for each department, you will see that Sanghvi relied on these meetings rather than her staff’s own research to identify which budget items violated city contracts, state law, or required the replacement of key equipment.

Forget planning; what followed were crazy events in which the departments tried to reason with Sanghvi about why her appropriations were not workable. Sanghvi, who is truly clueless, would arbitrarily fund some activities while rejecting others.

Take overtime in the Public Safety Department. Sanghvi slashed overtime. This money is essential for special events, as event venues must operate in a safe environment that requires additional police and fire protection.

This is no way to run a city the size of Saratoga Springs. The proof of Sanghvi’s folly is the 2025 budget. This city is running out of money.

Important Deadline Missed

The city’s quarterly financial report is a key document because it provides an ongoing status report on the fiscal condition of the city.

From the city charter:

4.4.9 of the city charter requires that “the commissioner of finance shall submit to the Council, for each quarter, a written financial report on the status of the City’s financial plan. Such financial plan shall include a comparison of estimated and actual income and expenditures to date and shall be submitted within 45 days after the end of each quarter. Each quarterly summary shall be forwarded to the City Clerk’s office and shall be available for public review.

This is a bit in the weeds. The final quarterly report has been routinely delayed for many years beyond the 45-day requirement. It is submitted after the report on the city’s finances to the New York State Comptroller, which is due on April 30 each year. Past Finance Commissioners, upon filing the city’s annual report on its financial condition with the Comptroller, have then submitted the report summary to the City Council shortly thereafter, as required by the charter.

This is an essential report for assessing the city’s fiscal health. It includes the fund balance. The “fund balance” is the amount of money the city has in reserve. It assesses how each department did in staying within its department budget.

This year, Sanghvi never submitted the preliminary financial report (fourth quarter for 2024). Sanghvi quietly posted the report on October 17, 2025, almost 6 months after it should have been submitted to the Council.

This report provides key information on trends in the city’s financial condition. It should have revealed that the city’s spending rate was unsustainable. It should have prompted a serious discussion months ago as to what needed to be done in light of excess spending over revenue.

Hang On!

I have no idea where all this will end up. I am sure there will be a large tax increase (Sanghvi raised taxes in her first two budgets, but for obvious political reasons, she refused to raise taxes when she was running for the state Senate, and now that she is running for Supervisor), and Sanghvi will draw money from the city’s reserves–if she can figure out how much money is there.