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I submitted a FOIL request of the New York State Police for the investigation they performed into the Saratoga Springs’ On-Call scandal. After many months, I finally received the investigation report. For readers unfamiliar with the scandal that precipitated the investigation, here is the link from an earlier post. There are actually multiple posts on this fiasco. Using the search function in the blog, search for “on-call” for more stories.

The investigator from the State Police was Andrew Werner, who has since retired. Werner did an excellent job of determining what happened and who might be culpable.

The investigation confirmed that someone altered the resolution authorizing on-call pay for deputies, but Werner was unable to determine who changed the resolution, so no one was charged.

Nevertheless, the investigation did include some interesting revelations.

City Attorney David Harper Confirmed that The Council Resolution Posted As The Official Record Of The Meeting Was Inconsistent From The Video Record Of The Meeting

Classic Lying By Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran

Those of us who have dealt with former Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran are acquainted with his bizarre pattern of lying about things when the embarrassing truth exposing his lying is readily available.

In this case, Moran contacted Werner, telling him that he had a report documenting who had doctored the resolution. He claimed that it was done by an employee in his department whom he had fired.

Falsehood number one was that the late Lisa Ribis, the employee, was fired. I have documented Moran’s cruel obsession with harassing Ms. Ribis. In fact, Ms. Ribis was protected under civil service. He was only able to suspend her with pay pending a hearing on his charges. Ms. Ribis was highly regarded in City Hall. John Franck, who served as Accounts Commissioner, told this blogger of his high regard for Ms. Ribis. This same post chronicled Moran’s harassment of Ms. Ribis.

Before her hearing could be convened and after months being suspended with pay, Ms. Ribis was diagnosed with cancer. Having served the city for decades, she was able to retire, and the charges against her were dropped. Lisa Ribis was never fired.

According to the police report, Moran told the investigator in a telephone call that an outside computer company had investigated the matter and issued a report documenting that Ribis was the perpetrator.

When the report was not forthcoming, the investigator contacted Moran’s attorney to ask when Moran would be turning it over.

Attorney Dan Alonzo returned my call. Writer[Werner] inquired when Commissioner Moran would turn over the internal report from the Accounts Department on the employee who had been editing the City records without their permission. Attorney Alonzo advised that there was no report generated and it is his belief that internal investigation was a separate investigation that had nothing to do with the current state police investigation. I advised Attorney Alonzo that his client, Commissioner Moran, was the one who brought the report to my attention and the commissioner told me that he was going to turn that information over to the State Police. Attorney Alonzo advised that he needed to speak to his client again and would get back to me.

State Police Report

Moran never produced the report because it never existed and he made the whole thing up.

The Improper Payments And Missing Restitution

While the investigation was unable to determine who doctored the minutes, it did reveal that two deputies had been improperly paid. The redacted names of these deputies were Stacy Connors, Moran’s deputy, and Angela Rella, Mayor Ron Kim’s deputy. The resolution language authorized that the benefit would become effective in mid-February. These two women submitted requests for payment for the prior six weeks and were paid by the Finance Department, despite the resolution not authorizing it.

The attorneys representing Rella and Connors acknowledged the improper payments, and the city subsequently received checks representing restitution.

Then Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi acknowledged to Werner that the two women were improperly paid. These checks were never deposited in the city’s accounts. Readers who follow this blog will remember that this blogger made numerous attempts to find out from Sanghvi why she never deposited them. To this date, Sanghvi has never been willing to explain to the public why she allowed these women to keep their ill-gotten gains.

Moving On

As Moran and Sanghvi are no longer on the Council, all of this ends up being moot, except hopefully, their careers as elected officials on the City Council are over.

The Full Report

The city of Saratoga Springs has been in negotiations with the New York State Attorney General’s Office (OAG) for eighteen months over an agreement called an Assurance of Discontinuance or an AOD.

The AOD’s purpose was to address how the city should deal with the criticisms of how the police handled BLM demonstrations in 2021. The OAG’s report on the handing of these demonstrations, “A Report on the Saratoga Springs Police Department Response to Protests in 2021”, included extreme and sometimes false allegations based on several instances of intemperate remarks by two city officials that were exploited to describe Saratoga Springs as a city so marked by racism and violence that it sounded like Selma, Alabama, in 1965. The many problems with this report were explored in a previous post in February 26, 2024

Both the city and the OAG were trying to reach an agreement on which actions the city would be required to take to to avoid litigation.

The original draft of an AOD agreement to address the report’s allegations contained a litany of reforms that sparked considerable disagreement between the city and the OAG. The problems with the original draft were explored in detail in a previous post from June 26, 2024.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll, his deputy Dan Charleson, Police Chief Tyler MacIntosh, Assistant Chief Frederick Warfield, and James Potter of Hinman Straub (hired as counsel by the city) all worked with the OAG staff in the negotiations. Over time, the two groups established trust in each other, and both worked hard to craft a revised document that would yield policies that would enhance both the department and the community in maintaining the city’s law enforcement capabilities while protecting the constitutional rights of all.

The final agreement, which the City Council approved unanimously at its January 6, 2026, meeting, is radically different from the original OAG proposals.

Highlights Of The Revised Agreement

1. The original AOD stated that police on bikes could not be used for crowd control. That language was later removed.

2. The original draft specified that the throwing of water bottles did not justify an arrest. That provision was removed.

3. The Original draft prevented the SSPD from charging demonstrators with low-level offenses after the conclusion of the demonstration. The final agreement now allows the SSPD to bring low-level charges after a demonstration has been concluded. An Independent Oversight Official approved by the OAG will review these charges should they occur.

4. The original draft contained overly broad language that would have precluded the Public Safety Commissioner from influencing the department’s actions. The language was tweaked to say that the Public Safety Commissioner would not “improperly” influence the department.
5. The original draft banned the use of mounted police. In the final version, horse-mounted police are permitted at First Amendment assemblies only in positions at the back ranks of the police presence and shall not be used for crowd control, except in an emergency when necessary to ensure the safety of police officers and demonstrators.
6. The original language precluded any surveillance of protesters. Paragraph 57 now states that the city is prohibited from conducting surveillance based solely on engagement in First Amendment activity. This is consistent with federal Attorney General Guidelines.
7. The draft required that public comment shall be moved to the end of City Council meetings. When it was pointed out that the public would be frustrated by not being allowed to comment on resolutions prior to their adoption at Council meetings, it was agreed that the language would be changed from “shall” to “may.”
8. The AOD affirms that the City may enforce the demonstration declaration and has agreed to remove any potential jail sentence. As such, enforcement will be based on fines. Spontaneous demonstrations are permitted and have been upheld in federal cases. The AOD clearly defines a spontaneous demonstration as one that occurs in response to news or events that come into public knowledge less than 48 hours prior to the demonstration.

9. SSPD should advance to Tier 4 (arrest) only when demonstrators have refused to comply with dispersal orders issued at Tier 3. Dispersal orders must be read three times, with five-minute intervals, between each warning. If an emergency exists, SSPD may instruct demonstrators to disperse immediately.

10. The new language requires the city to establish a senior officer to be responsible for internal affairs. They would be trained to effectively monitor and manage disciplinary actions against officers charged with violations. Paragraph 73 indicates that we need a Captain or higher designated as an Internal Affairs Officer, which will require a new hire for the SSPD.

A Win For All

Given the highly charged nature of the issues, it is a testament to both the city and the OAG that patience and commitments to both the Constitution and the need for effective law enforcement led to an agreement that benefits the city and all its residents.

[Lew Benton (the picture is not of Lew) has done a tremendous service to our community in analyzing Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi’s budgets during her tenure in office. Lew documents how Sanghvi’s arbitrary numbers have “baked in” deficits into the city’s finances and have left the city in a deep financial hole for others to try to dig out of. His assessment? She has routinely violated her fiduciary obligations.]

From Lew Benton

The “Participatory Budgeting” process was ill-conceived from the start, but in the final analysis, its impact on the city’s fiscal health was insignificant when compared to the structural deficits built into the spending plans of the last few years.

With the advent of the Sanghvi administration four years ago, the city began preparing and adopting operating budgets with baked-in deficits.  This was not unique, but each successive budgeting cycle since 2023 has consistently and increasingly underestimated expenditures and overestimated revenues.

The 2023 and 2024 budgets even included a non-existent $250,000 cannabis tax revenue.  But finance’s biggest budgeting sin has been underestimating major operating costs. Initially, in the preparation of the 2023 budget, a council majority made up of new members, including the budget officer, could be given some empathy.  But in preparing the 2024 budget, the finance commissioner failed to reverse course.

No doubt, the lack of institutional knowledge and limited understanding of how this government functions among a council composed of first-term members could temper the inadequacies in the 2023 budget.  But failure to recognize and correct them going forward was unacceptable and violatedher fiduciary responsibility.  

And that failure was aggravated by her inexplicable decision to present the then-proposed 2024 budget in a form wholly inconsistent with the requirements of 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 were lumped together, not disaggregated by function.

Attempting to understand and compare the commissioner’s proposed amended 2024 budget with previous spending plans was as perplexing as Alan Turing’s early efforts to crack the Enigma Code.

The Charter requires a budget presentation that is transparent, relatively simple, and allows and encourages understanding.  The commissioner’s amended budget format was opaque.  

For example, several “department” expenditure lines under the auspices of the mayor were simply thrown together, co-mingled.  The reviewer was 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 was true for Finance, Accounts, Public Safety, and Public Works.  In the latter 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., required substantial investment in time and enough working knowledge to assign each line item to its respective agency.

In the mayor’s proposed budget, there were at least seven expenditure lines labeled “Professional Services,” but the only way to determine which department each line applied to required a time-consuming, tedious matching of account numbers.

Why finance elected to abandon a budget format that had always been relatively easy to read and understand, in favor of one significantly more difficult to puzzle out, is itself a conundrum. 

The 2024 City Comprehensive Budget would eventually require significant amendments to avoid operating deficits, at the expense of the City’s fund balance.

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

That all came on the heels of a 2023 budget that preordained the 2024 proposal’s many overstated anticipated revenues and, in some cases, grossly underfunded expenditure lines.  

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, rang hollow. 

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

The following are examples of the unfavorable variances in the 2024 operating budget. 

Revenues

In Finance, $850,000 in Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue was 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 in 2023.

The 2023 budget included 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 prematurely including the revenue in the 2023 budget only added to a negative revenue variance

The proposed Mortgage Tax revenue for 2024 was $1.5 million compared to the $933,400 collected to date in 2023.  The $933,400 was far below the $2.05 million budgeted. 

The mayor’s budget was ripe with unfavorable 2024 revenue variances.  The Building Permit account carried a proposed $700,000 revenue even in the face of a major decline in permit revenues in 2023. 

Likewise, Planning Board fees were 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 Finance projected it would fall $35,000 short.  

The Public Safety revenue budget included 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.

Parking Enforcement revenue was anticipated to be $462,0000 this in 2023, 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 2023 and 2024 budgets contributed to the city’s present fiscal dilemma, so have what appear 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, but finance projected that by the end of the fiscal year, $533,500 would be spent, which was an astronomical increase of $343,500 over the amount budgeted.

Similarly, the Firefighter Compensation Time budget was anticipated to be overspent.  Only $190,000 was earmarked for this line in the 2023 budget but $563,000 was 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 proposed to appropriate the rather odd amount of $263,637 for Compensation Time vis-à-vis the $483,570 spent in 2022 and the projected $450,000 in 2023.  The 2024 OT line is set at $325,000, compared with the $507,505 expended in 2022 and the then-estimated $450,000 in 2024.

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 were $1,981,000.

This pattern has only continued in the course of preparing and adopting the 2025 and now the 2026 budgets. I do not envy the challenges faced by the 2026 council.

I have catalogued Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi’s record of arrogance, mismanagement, and recklessness extensively during her four years in office. Yet even I was not prepared for her performance at the December 29, 2025, special end-of-year City Council meeting, her last.

Interestingly, according to the evaluations by her Skidmore students included in the second part of this post, her behavior in the classroom is no better.

Blogger’s Bizarre Exchange With Sanghvi

I attended the December 29, 2025, City Council meeting and spoke during the public comment period. My remarks were in response to comments Commissioner Sanghvi had made to the press regarding her colleagues, Mayor John Safford and Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll.

Just as a reminder, here is what Sanghvi said to the Daily Gazette about Mayor Safford in the December 17 edition:

“It was a transparent process. [Safford] voted for it,” Sanghvi said. “And I don’t know what to think about, except that, you know, I have sympathies for cognitive declines with age.”

As for Coll, she told Wendy Liberatore at the Times Union (12/27/25) that his department had excessive overtime expenses, which he needs to get under control, but that “he doesn’t seem to care.” Sanghvi fails to identify which overtime costs she considers excessive and unwarranted.

Here are my remarks and her response.

Sanghvi’s bizarre response.

How can her performance be explained?

One possibility is that her mind automatically shifts into denial when confronted by unflattering revelations. Readers may recall that she recently denied having told Commissioner Coll that “absolutely” the 2026 budget would not include her participatory budgeting program, even though her comment, recorded on video, promised it would be removed.

The other, and more likely, explanation is that she was unwilling to apologize for her indefensible attack on Mayor Safford, so she pretended she had not followed the blogger’s three-minute remarks.

To fully appreciate her behavior at the December 29 meeting, these close-up clips are more revealing.

Overwhelmingly Devastating Evaluations of Minita Sanghvi As Skidmore Professor

There is a website where students can post evaluations of their professors. I have excerpted some of the evaluations of Minita Sanghvi. According to the website, 74 students posted evaluations. For the full evaluation, go to the link above.

Seven (10%) rated her “awesome.”

Six (8%) rated her as “Ok.”

Sixty-one (82%) rated her as “awful.”

I have screenshot the beginning of the evaluations and am including a smattering of other comments from her evaluations.

These are more from the site.

Lacks basic human decency (or empathy for others)

She’s extremely mean and offers zero support.

Extremely pretentious + rude.

It’s very odd to me that she’s still employed. Her utter disregard for the boundaries and feelings of others is truly appalling.

Take this class and you’ll be met with belittling comments, resistance, unnecessary stress, and a negative demeanor that isn’t conducive to learning.

She has a God complex and truly thinks she is better than everyone else. Very strange.

Possibly the most disliked professor at Skidmore and for good reason. She has zero intention of helping others & certainly does not want to see them go onto to be more successful than she is

From the way she treated me, you’d think she was being forced to teach the course for free.

She was extremely rude to our class,

A narcissist who seems to think that only herself (and the people she likes or agrees with) deserve to thrive or even exist in this world.

She really does not like people and shouldn’t be working with them.

She truly takes joy in putting other people down.

She wants more opportunities to put people beneath her so she can feel superior.

There are several attendance policy posts which is funny because she has a horrible attendance record for City Council meetings. For instance:

Her obsession with attendance and not being even a minute late is odd and speak to her controlling personality.

These are only back to March 2025. I skipped some negative ones.

She holds very clear hostility towards women who don’t agree with her viewpoints

Her unkind demeanor and lack of basic social skills was off-putting

She isn’t very kind

Minita Sanghvi acted extremely smug throughout the entire course

So terrible it’s almost funny. It’s abundantly obvious at this point that Skidmore keeps her around for reasons other than teaching abilities or people skills.

I haven’t met even one person who felt comfortable around her.

Minita is an unethical personal all-around.

she struck me as quite the terrible human being

Has an inflated sense of ego

she’s blatantly rude

basic interactions with this teacher will quickly reveal her inflated sense of self-importance

Minita is horrible. She is super liberal and tries to make people fail

Given the abundance of these very telling reviews for Prof. Sanghvi, it is clear that staff disciplinary action should have been taken against her within Skidmore long ago

Incredibly insensitive, controlling, and judgmental.

Professor Sanghvi was overtly condescending and dismissive

When 18-year old students are acting with more compassion and maturity than the professor, you know there’s a problem.

Poor communicator and very intense which can make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. She’s narcissistic with a God Complex

The New York Coalition for Open Government, a highly respected not-for-profit group that advocates for better transparency in government, has issued awards at its annual meeting. In the case of Saratoga Springs, we received two awards. Both were well deserved.

These awards would, under normal circumstances, be an enormous embarrassment to the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee, which has uncritically promoted Moran and has been disturbingly silent about the events that prompted the awards. It is yet another confirmation of how oblivious the Committee is to the profound importance of the New York State Open Meetings Law and the best traditions of democracy.

Press Release

Mike Brandi Honored on New York Coalition for Open Government’s Annual “Nice List” for Leadership in Government Transparency

Saratoga Springs, NY — Mike Brandi has been honored with inclusion on the New York Coalition for Open Government’s annual “Nice List,” recognizing individuals and organizations who have demonstrated a strong commitment to transparency and open government across New York State.

The New York Coalition for Open Government is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting open, honest, and accountable government at all levels throughout New York State. At a press conference held today, the Coalition announced its annual “Naughty and Nice List,” which highlights individuals who have either advanced—or undermined—the principles of open government over the past year.

Brandi was recognized for his role in exposing and pursuing unlawful conduct that obstructed public access to government records. His actions were central to bringing to light the conduct of outgoing Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran, who issued multiple false certifications in an effort to conceal public records maintained on his personal email account and social media.

In a landmark case, the Saratoga Springs City Court found Moran guilty after trial on three counts of unlawful obstruction of public access to records. As a result of that conduct, Moran was one of ten individuals statewide named to the New York Coalition for Open Government’s “Naughty List” for acting against the public’s right to know and unlawfully obstructing transparency.

“Open government laws only matter if they are enforced,” Brandi said. “This recognition underscores the importance of holding public officials accountable when they attempt to hide public records or evade transparency requirements.”

Under Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi, the city has continually run deficits with no apparent concern from the Commissioner or warning to the Council until this October, when the hole she had been digging for her four years in office could no longer be hidden.

The city’s 2024 financial audit revealed even more weaknesses in Sanghvi’s management of the city’s finances. What is particularly embarrassing is that some of the “exceptions” (mismanaged items) that were cited in the 2023 audit were never corrected. The 2024 audit should have been available to the public no later than November 1, according to the city’s charter. As these criticisms would have been quite damaging had they been revealed before she was elected Supervisor, it was convenient for Sanghvi that she missed the required date and only showed the public the audit after the election.

In addition, her 2026 budget continues her pattern of overestimating revenues and underestimating expenses to create the illusion of a balanced budget.

Her promotion of “Participatory Budgeting” (PB) in the face of these deficits is also problematic. These budget items result from individuals and groups submitting funding proposals. As the excerpts later in this post show, she initially claimed that, to produce a “realistic” budget, she had eliminated Participatory Budgeting along with her other cuts.

As it turns out, she reneged on this promise.

Laudable as the projects proposed for funding are, it is a legitimate question to ask: in light of the city’s other needs and the documented problems with her previous budgets, how confident can we be that the financial condition of the city can support the critical programs of the city, let alone participatory budgeting projects? It is interesting how focused Sanghvi is on PB and how oblivious she appears to be regarding the intricate details that comprise the rest of the city budget.

An Utter Failure To Control Costs During Sanghvi’s Tenure As Commissioner Places the City’s Finances On Edge

In October, Commissioner Sanghvi announced that the city was financially in a hole. She called for draconian cuts, yet she dismissed raising taxes above the 2% cap set by the state to address the shortfall.

As reported previously on this blog, this involved zeroing out funds for the homeless, the senior citizens’ center, and the money to pay crossing guards to protect schoolchildren, among other items. Only after Mayor Safford, Public Works Commissioner Chuck Marshall, and Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll pushed back and insisted on raising more taxes to support these programs did Sanghvi agree to restore the non-profit funding.

This shocking revelation should be no surprise in hindsight. In fact, Sanghvi has been running deficits for years without any apparent concern that would have required her to deliver stern warnings to her colleagues on the Council about the need to restrain spending or raise taxes.

As just one example, readers may recall that this blogger expressed alarm about accepting a grant to pay for 16 firefighters for 3 years, which would require the city to maintain these positions for another 2 years.

Making matters worse, former Mayor Ron Kim negotiated a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the firefighters’ union that requires the city to continue paying these firefighters in perpetuity, as the MOU commits the city to maintain four-person crews on engines. Kim had been urged by the city’s labor lawyer to include a sunset clause, but Kim ignored this warning, and the then-sitting Council, including Sanghvi, approved the agreement.

The cost of these additional firefighters to the city is well over $1.5 million a year. Here is a link to an earlier published blog piece.

There is a strong argument that, for safety reasons, having four fighters on a truck is a good policy. On the other hand, the cost for this is onerous. The cities of Troy and Schenectady use three on a truck because of the enormous expense. Michele Madigan, who preceded Sanghvi as Finance Commissioner, strongly supported the smaller crews given the cost.

Sanghvi ignored these concerns and, as Finance Commissioner, helped pass the MOU. Sanghvi assured her colleagues and the public that she could set aside sufficient funds to handle this. This was the kind of magical thinking that has marked her terms as Commissioner.

Sanghvi’s Unenviable Legacy Of Deficit Spending:

For The Year Ending December 31, 2023, The City Ran A Deficit Of $3,501,005.00

For The Year Ending December 31, 2024, The City Ran A Deficit Of $1,732,851.00.

For The Current Year (2025), Sanghvi Estimated The Deficit Will Be Approximately $3,500,000.00

Sanghvi continues to overspend. This number will not be final until the books are closed, but one of Sanghvi’s emails projected a loss of $3,500,000.00 that will have to be covered by the city’s dwindling reserves.

Sanghvi Overestimates City’s Financial Reserves

As Sanghvi has been continually dipping into the city’s reserves to cover the deficits she has been running, it is particularly concerning that the auditors have warned that Sanghvi overestimated the unassigned fund balance (reserves) at the end of 2024 by $1,000,000.00.

This year is not over. The exact numbers will not be available until the books are closed and the 2025 audit is completed.

The Participatory Budgeting Conundrum

In light of the city’s emerging financial difficulties, Sanghvi’s zealous advocacy for participatory budgeting reflects the arbitrariness of her decisions.

In this clip from the November 14, 2024, budget workshop, Sanghvi assures Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll that, in light of the city’s fiscal problems, she is removing the funding for Participatory Budgeting.

Sanghvi’s attempt to spin away from her earlier commitment.

I am sympathetic to the ideas put forward by the community for Participatory Budgeting.

The problem is that, given Commissioner Sanghvi’s record of arbitrary decisions and her unwillingness to be granular in analyzing and prioritizing the city’s finances, I have no confidence in her 2026 budget. Only after the auditors have met publicly with this year’s or next year’s incoming Council to discuss the city’s finances and after incoming Commissioner of Finance JoAnne Kiernan, who has worked as a certified public accountant, has been able to go through the books, should the city decide on the viability of continuing Sanghvi’s PB program.

The Auditor’s Report For 2024

This is the complete audit.

This is an excerpt from the auditor’s findings, which include two items identified in 2023 that remain unresolved a year later.

These are Sanghvi’s assurances that they will be fixed. Note that some of them project the fix date as 12/31/2026, meaning it will be her successor who will have to clean up her mess.

Saratoga Springs is finally coming to the end of the ordeal of having to listen to disinformation from Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi and Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran. Still, even for them, the chaos and dishonesty they have engaged in discussing the mess Sanghvi created with the 2026 budget takes a lot of nerve.

In the November 20, 2025, edition of the Saratogian, its readers were subjected to the magical thinking of Sanghvi and Moran, in which events are twisted beyond recognition.

Sanghvi’s Twisted Self-Congratulations

According to the city’s charter, the Finance Commissioner is supposed to spend months working with each department’s executive staff to craft the next year’s budget. The budget is supposed to reflect the Commissioner’s best thinking on balancing the city’s resources with its anticipated income.

In October, with less than two months until the budget’s required adoption date, Sanghvi suddenly announced that the city was in a deep financial hole. Her response was classic partisan abuse. To close this hole, Sanghvi’s (a Democrat) proposed budget eliminated funding for the Mayor’s (a Republican running for office) department for non-profits, most of which were devoted to homelessness, as well as other key services like school crossing guards.

This is what Sanghvi told the Saratogian on October 9, 2025,

“I could not take money from our police or public works department and then give that money to nonprofits. This is not an easy decision. This is not something we did lightly, but we had no other way of doing this.”

In this same article, she dismissed the idea of raising the property tax rate to address the shortfall:

Another option Sanghvi pointed out, though she added that she did not (sic) believe “city residents should not be facing the burden of rising property taxes every year” and that “2% is more than enough.”(Emphasis added)

Saratogian Newspaper

Sanghvi doesn’t explain where the money will come from to put the $900,000.00 back in the budget. Magic!

According to the November 25, 2025 Times Union, Sanghvi transferred $1,810,000.00 from the city’s fund balance (reserves) and $500,000.00 from the city’s retirement reserve. So we will run a deficit of at least $2,310,000.00 next year. I have no idea whether it is prudent to take $500,000.00 away from the city’s retirement reserve. It is troubling that Sanghvi supposedly overestimated by $500,000.00 what would be needed next year to meet our obligation regarding the retirement system.

Sanghvi’s Magical Thinking

As it turned out, the final budget was very different from her original proposal. In addition to raiding the city’s reserves and its retirement funding, Sanghvi reversed her position on raising taxes. Her new budget will now benefit by raising taxes by 4.53%. This, of course, comes after the election, during which she was campaigning for a Count Supervisor position.

It is important to note that based on Sanghvi’s budget, the city ran a deficit of $3,500,000.00 during the current (2025) year. It is rather stunning that Sanghvi only revealed this fiscal hole after her successful campaign for County Supervisor.

I’m sorry that, for many, the Saratogian articles are behind a paywall, as it is impossible to summarize the rambling, contradictory remarks Sanghvi made to the Saratogian in defense of what she did. Sanghvi effusively congratulated herself and her work with the community for reinstating her own cuts.

Take this statement from Sanghvi:

They [JK: The community?] said very clearly that they wanted to fund the RISE shelter, the homeless, Franklin Community Center and all these other organizations, which are doing incredible work in our community and that they were fine with the 4.5% tax increase. I think it was important for the public to come to that conclusion themselves and say, ‘yes, we want this tax increase to pay for this. And I think that’s sort of the goal that we achieved here.”

This may be the way Sanghvi wants this debacle remembered, but it is not what actually happened.

In fact, Sanghvi faced significant pushback from Mayor Safford, Public Works Commissioner Chuck Marshall, and Commissioner Coll on her budget from the start.

This is Coll’s recollection:

As soon as I saw the Comprehensive Budget unilaterally presented by Commissioner Sanghvi, I knew we were in trouble. The proposal included no funding for school crossing guards, contractual obligations, or our vital nonprofits such as the homeless shelter and the Senior Center. I strongly advocated for a tax increase to our legal limit (4.5%) and for using fund balance to support our nonprofits. Fortunately, Mayor Safford, Commissioner Marshall, and I reached a consensus to address the needs of our most vulnerable residents, as Commissioner Moran was absent from this particular budget workshop. The video of this meeting, dated 11/14/2025, will corroborate and set forth the truth of this matter, including that Commissioner Sanghvi’s budget did not provide funding for these nonprofits from the outset.

Commissioner Tim Coll

Dillon Moran’s Memory Hole

Moran was the sole vote against adopting the budget. He attributed his vote to the budget’s failure to include funds to address the city’s alleged water issues, issues he claimed he raised when he ran for DPW Commissioner seven years ago.

According to the Saratogian article, Moran said:

“The budget does nothing to put forward money to invest in the most important thing we provide to our citizens, which is clean, potable, consistent drinking water. I, in good conscience, cannot vote for that budget. The biggest issue facing this community. Period.”

Moran to the Saratogian

So if Moran was alarmed about the lack of money in the budget regarding water, why didn’t he offer an amendment to address his allegation?

Instead, he offered the following shrill warning to the Saratogian:

“The budget does not include money to address the issues in any sort of meaningful way. We are facing a $40 million investment that I called for seven years ago, when it was $24 million and it’s $40 now. If we don’t do something about it today, it’s going to be 50 (million), and then 60 (million), and then we’re going to have a major failure and then big sections of our community could be without drinking water.

“And if they’re without drinking water for a certain period of time, and those pipes sit dry, that’s it.”

Dillon Moran

Apparently, Moran does not remember that his campaign for Commissioner of Public Works at the time was deep-sixed when it was revealed that a campaign mailer he had sent included a forged letter purportedly from the New York State Department of Health supporting his wildly false accusations about the state of the city’s water supply.

Here is a post documenting Moran’s folly in which he falsified the NYSHD letter.

This is the mailer containing the forged letter from the New York State Department of Health that Moran sent out in his attack on the late Public Works Commissioner Skip Scirocco.