The City Council has 45 days to discuss and cut, but not add to, the mayor's proposed $120 million budget.
This updates a story posted at 5:32 p.m.
Holyoke City Hall.HOLYOKE – Mayor Elaine A. Pluta delivered a state-of-the-city address to the City Council Tuesday that included presentation of a $120 million budget for the next fiscal year and a swipe at the Holyoke Geriatric Authority.
Pluta said the spending plan for the fiscal year begins July 1 avoids job cuts.
“For the second year in a row I am pleased to submit a budget that avoids layoffs or furloughs,” Pluta said.
The $120,278,417 budget is $3 million, or 2.5 percent, higher than the $117 million approved for the current fiscal year.
Presentation of the budget will open a 45-day window in which the City Council is authorized to hold hearings on accounts in the budget and can cut, but not add to, the budget.
More than half the budget consists of funding from the state with the rest covered mostly by revenue from property taxes, excise taxes and other fees.
State aid to Holyoke is projected to be $77.4 million in the next fiscal year compared to the current $76 milion, the Department of Revenue said.
A cost that Pluta said she will focus on is the unpaid bills to city agencies owed by the Holyoke Geriatric Authority, which Pluta said has “poor financial controls.”
The authority’s debt to the city is an ongoing dispute. Pluta, Treasurer Jon D. Lumbra and city councilors put the debt at $2.84 million while authority officials say the total is $877,000.
The authority owes money going back to 2008 for gas and electric, health insurance, retirement and other services, officials said.
Pluta said she will be meeting with the three mayoral appointees to the authority’s board of directors to discuss the financial problems and she urged the council to meet with its appointees, as well.
The authority is a quasi-official municipal agency. The council appoints three members of the board of directors, the mayor appoints three and those six then vote on a seventh member.
Executive Director Sheryl Y. Quinn said later the authority is handcuffed by the federal Medicaid reimbursement formula that nets the facility at 45 Lower Westfield Road only 75 cents on the dollar.
“We certainly are a lean and mean operation. There’s not much extra up there. In fact, there’s no extra. And, you know, we continue to provide high-quality care and will keep doing that,” Quinn said.
Quinn said she would like to know what financial controls Pluta thinks the authority should establish.
The authority is an 80-bed nursing home that also provides day-care services to another 80 senior citizens. It has 177 full- and part-time employees and a payroll of $4 million, officials said.
Pluta said that among the increases in her proposed budget is $500,000 in city contributions to employee pensions, a cost that will rise to $10 million from the current $9.5 million.
The largest share of the city budget, $62.9 million, goes toward the public schools. The total school budget for the next fiscal year hasn’t been determined, but the current one is $75.7 million, according to the School Department website.
Pluta’s Police Department budget is $11.3 million, down from the current year’s $11.5 million.
Her Fire Department budget is $8.69 million, down from the current $8.7 million.
Councilor Todd A. McGee, chairman of the Finance Committee, said that when he begins reviewing the budget one area he will study is Pluta’s plan for the tax collector’s office. In terms of staff, the office is down to only Tax Collector David Guzman and another employee. A third employee is out with an illness, he said.