{"id":64506,"date":"2025-12-18T18:47:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/64506\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T18:47:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:47:16","slug":"public-comment-2026-erie-county-budget-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/64506\/","title":{"rendered":"Public comment 2026 Erie County budget Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"

The public is asked to provide feedback on the recently adopted 2026 Erie County budget at a town hall meeting on Thursday.<\/p>\n

County Executive Mark Poloncarz will speak at 4 p.m. at the Thomas A. Edison Elementary School auditorium in Tonawanda. He is expected to go into detail on a number of county investments in the town of Tonawanda.<\/p>\n

The Erie County Legislature approved the amended 2026 county budget earlier this month by a vote of 7 to 4.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The $2.1 billion budget features a property tax decrease, from $3.29 per thousand dollars of assessed value to $3.09.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0budget<\/a>\u00a0also includes more than $800,000 for new snowplows and $2.7 million for infrastructure projects around the city. It allocates $9.2 million to Buffalo Police and Fire, $7.4 million for the Dept. of Public Works – Division of Buildings, $8.2 million for Dept. of Public Works – Division of Engineering, $3.4 million for Dept. of Public Works – Division of Streets, $600,000 for Parking Enforcement, $62,900 for Dept of Management Information Systems and $3.7 million for Cultural and Education investments.<\/p>\n

The major amendment made to Poloncarz’s budget was the axing of a $20 million appropriation to start design and engineering work for a new county jail.\u00a0The proposal was for a new\u00a0$430 million\u00a0jail and holding center in Alden.\u00a0Erie County Sheriff John Garcia says\u00a0$54 million\u00a0in immediate upgrades and repairs are now needed at facilities across the county.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Members of the\u00a0Legislature say property taxes would have\u00a0likely gone\u00a0up\u00a0if they approved the\u00a0$20 million to be spent on that process.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The public is asked to provide feedback on the recently adopted 2026 Erie County budget at a town…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8255,1611,136,138,137,883,139,50,1592],"class_list":{"0":"post-64506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-buffalo","10":"tag-erie","11":"tag-erie-headlines","12":"tag-erie-news","13":"tag-local-politics","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-spectrum-news-staff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64506","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=64506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}