BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) \u2014 Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz unveiled his proposed 2027 budget Thursday, a spending plan totaling just over $2.4 billion across all operating funds.<\/p>\n
The proposal represents a 5.4% increase over the county\u2019s approved 2026 budget.<\/p>\n
While the county\u2019s property tax levy has increased by 3.6%, or $12.7 million, the property tax rate would decrease by eight cents to $3.01 per $1,000 of assessed value.<\/p>\n
Poloncarz said about 88% of the proposed budget is driven by state and federal requirements and union contracts.<\/p>\n
The county executive also said the spending plan accounts for the possibility of costs shifting from the federal government to state and local governments if changes aren’t made to the federal legislation known as the \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a balanced budget, it\u2019s a fair budget. It doesn\u2019t have any bells and whistles,\u201d Poloncarz said. \u201cIt\u2019s not something like you often see in budgets. You see folks introduce new types of programs and initiatives. That\u2019s not here. It\u2019s a steady-as-she-goes budget, knowing that there\u2019s a lot of rough waters ahead if the big ugly bill is not changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Erie County Legislator Lindsay Lorigo, a Republican, pushed back on Poloncarz\u2019s focus on the federal government, saying the county should also be looking to Albany over the mandates it faces.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is most of our mandates come from the state, and that\u2019s where the county executive should be standing up, and standing up for the residents of Erie County so we don\u2019t have to foot those bills,\u201d Lorigo said. \u201cUnfortunately, he\u2019d rather blame the federal government when he could be having these conversations with his good friend Kathy Hochul.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposed budget now heads to the Erie County Legislature for review, with a vote expected in December. <\/p>\n
Lorigo said she expects lawmakers to discuss possible amendments, including taking a closer look at future investment proposed for Willowdale Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) \u2014 Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz unveiled his proposed 2027 budget Thursday, a spending plan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137],"class_list":["post-307684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}