Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan says he’s open to ideas as the city faces a projected $109 million budget shortfall.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — With financial pressure building at Buffalo City Hall over a proposed 25 percent property tax increase from Mayor Sean Ryan, other ideas are circulating to determine how best to deal with a projected $109 million budget gap. 

RELATED: Mayor Ryan planning annual tax increases when he releases his 4-year budget plan

In a letter to Ryan,  Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes is raising concerns about the impact on her East Side Assembly District residents but also suggesting a discussion with Erie County officials. 

As Mayor Ryan put it last week: “If someone has ideas on how t close a $109 million budget gap, we’ve got time. That’s why we put this information out. I’m open to all ideas.”

So in that letter from the Assemblymember, she asks, “What conversations have you had with Erie County about potential shared services, sales tax sharing, and direct financial aid?”

As Peoples-Stokes explained to Channel 2’s Nate Benson: “The county doesn’t share its one percent and it never has. And people say, well, if you share with Buffalo you have to share with Tonawanda and Lackawanna. Well, you should. That’s the way the law reads for three cities, and resources should be shared with them.”

Actually, in the last legislative session in Albany, then-State Senator Ryan actually sponsored the bill for the extension of one percent of the 8.75 percent sales tax for Erie County through 2027. The measure signed by the governor had warned in its language that if it was not approved, county property taxes could soar and road work would not be possible.

So last Friday, Mayor Ryan said he would like more sharing of the tax revenue. But when specifically asked about the idea of more tax sharing he also said: “We’re not in this shape because of external forces like sales tax. We’re in this shape because we were fiscally mismanaged for a generation.”

And then County Executive Mark Poloncarz said he would not agree at all on the increased sales tax sharing idea.

“The city already receives kind of a double payment based on the 1977 sales tax agreement,” he said. “So they get two bites of the apple where every school district, town, other city and village only get one bite at the apple. It would have to be completely redone through the legislature, and with most of the legislature now representing suburban areas, I just don’t think it would make sense, and it could actually backfire as the suburbanites would actually want more money. So at this point, I have intention of revisiting the 1977 sales tax sharing agreement.”  

Poloncarz says Erie County currently helps the city with some snow plowing. He added: “We have the Urban Initiatives Fund in which we actually buy — we don’t give money to the city out of it — but we buy equipment. Or we do a road in the city of Buffalo. Roads are expensive.”

The Majority Leader’s office says they are waiting for a response from Mayor Ryan on her questions and concerns and she hopes to soon meet with him again.