My Meeting With Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins
By Nancy Muldoon
My meeting with Ken Ivins took place at City Hall, Friday July 24th at 2pm
Citizen Nancy: How is it that Saratoga didn’t get any [VLT] money?
Ken Ivins: Well a couple things, we had VLT money all along. Two years ago we [Saratoga] got about $3.5 million, then last year we [Saratoga] were supposed to get $3.8 million but they figured they overpaid us by $500,000, so they gave us $3.2. That year [2008] Eliot Spitzer said he was going to cut it in half, half one year and zero the next year.
Citizen Nancy: What was his reasoning for doing that?
Ken Ivins: Ahh, he just wanted the money back.
Citizen Nancy: For what? To go back downstate?
Ken Ivins: To go into the General Fund so he could use it for whatever.
Joe Bruno fought for us and got it for us [Saratoga] for those years and we were at 100%
of what we were supposed to be getting.
Last Fall, Governor Paterson came out and said we are going to give you half, okay, no future year projection just this coming year we’re gonna give you half. Now we had already done our budget once, then he came out with that so we have re-adjusted our budget to be halved, but we still went down to Albany to try to get all of it.
Then when the budgets came out in April, Malcolm Smith and Sheldon Silver and their staffs sat down and created a new budget, basically three people in a room; sat down and created a new budget. They came up with a new formula on how this money was to be distributed.
Based on the poverty level of the county, some municipalities got whole, some got half, and we [Saratoga] were the only city/county that got nothing in the entire state.
So right in the middle of a year now, we are budgeted for half; we now have to take out… I had budgeted half of $3.8 million which is $1.9 million, then we [Saratoga] ended up with nothing.
They [Albany] are discriminating against us and basically because we’re [Saratoga] successful. We’re [Saratoga] being punished for being successful.
Citizen Nancy: It’s kind of like opening up a business and everybody profiting except you.
Ken Ivins: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Citizen Nancy: And Governor Paterson could change this but just isn’t that interested?
Ken Ivins: At this point he’s not that interested, as far as we can tell. The feeling I get from the folks in Albany is [that] Saratoga is wealthy, they can afford it, they’re other places in the state that need more attention and more money.
Citizen Nancy: And it’s perfectly legal?
Ken Ivins: Yeah, cause they pass the law.
Citizen Nancy: How can and should Saratoga Springs generate more revenue?
Ken Ivins: Well, we’ve been talking about a couple of things that have not been very popular, obviously we can raise property taxes and this represents about twenty percent.
This money is ten percent of our whole budget but twenty percent of what we raise in property taxes.
Citizen Nancy: Don’t you think New York property owners are already paying a lot of money in property taxes?
Ken Ivins: Absolutely, Absolutely, so you’ve got that. We talked about putting a fee on SPAC tickets and SPAC has already has said that they don’t want that at all. And there is a number of people who have posted some things on the Times Union blog saying how terrible Saratoga is for doing this and that all you’re doing is taxing the middle class so I’m getting all kinds of heat there.
Eventually at some point we’ve got to get New York State to write a bill and approve it and pass it in all three legislative bodies for that to happen. There is still a few I’s and T’s that need to be crossed and dotted before we can even do a resolution to pass on to our elected leaders so were looking at next year [for this to happen] at best.
One of the other areas is paid parking.
Citizen Nancy: I was just going to ask you about that. How soon can we expect to see that?
Ken Ivins: I don’t know if you will ever see it. But I am probably going to be putting it forward in the fall as another way of doing it. Originally I talked about building some garages and putting it there…. I may scale that back and just put it with lots, paved lots currently and current parking garages that are there now. It is a possible revenue generator, but then again, [the] Downtown Business Association, the Special Assessment District, the Chamber [of Commerce] and folks like that and a lot of residents don’t want to see paid parking at all.
Citizen Nancy: What about doing it [paid parking] during racing season?
Ken Ivins: That’s a possibility as well. But if you are going to invest in the equipment to make it all happen then you might as well do something year round, especially on Broadway, people really don’t want to see it [paid parking] on Broadway.
I don’t foresee that happening this year, possibly for next.
Citizen Nancy: What inspired you to want to become Finance Commissioner?
Ken Ivins: (laughs) If I had known then what I know now!
Citizen Nancy: If you could change one thing about Saratoga what would it be?
Ken Ivins: I don’t think I want to change it I just want to keep it affordable for long time residents. The biggest thing that I heard on the campaign trail last time around was that a lot of long time residents were looking to move out of Saratoga because they couldn’t afford to live here any more.
So the biggest thing I want to do is fight to keep the property taxes down try to find other ways of bringing income in and that’s why I am looking at SPAC and paid parking because it brings money in from people who don’t live here.
There are a lot of out of town folks who are using our services, our police protection, our fire protection, help share the bill here. The same with paid parking, there is a lot of people who work here that at night go home and while they’re here they are getting police protection, and fire protection, you know it’s a nice clean affordable city and there not contributing into keeping it that way.
Citizen Nancy: Who is your favorite historical figure and why?
Ken Ivins: (laughs) Actually, I like Ben Franklin.
Citizen Nancy: Why?
Ken Ivins: Ahh, cause he just had some good down to earth common sense ideas. Poor Richards Almanac was Ben Franklin’s blog of his day.
Citizen Nancy: Who runs Saratoga? I mean really Ken, who pulls the strings?
Ken Ivins: (laughs) In the city or in the government?
Citizen Nancy: Both. In the city of Saratoga, who really runs Saratoga Springs?
Ken Ivins: I don’t know. I think it’s a core group…but it’s a fairly good sized group, I don’t really think its one person, obviously you’ve got your economic folks with an economic influence here. You’ve also got interested parties like DBA (Downtown Business Association) and the Chamber (of Commerce) and folks like that. I wouldn’t say there is any one person that does that. I’ve got a personal opinion about City Hall but I’m not going to express that.
Citizen Nancy: If you could change anything about City Hall what would it be?
Ken Ivins: I would probably want the departments to work well together more. Especially right now, and the last couple of years…..the last probably… six, eight years…its been pretty devisive, based on what personalities are in what positions on the council. Some departments have worked well together and not worked well together, were not working as one team and I would prefer to see that.
Citizen Nancy: What is the most wasteful thing about Saratoga? What could be eliminated?
Ken Ivins: Publicly I’ve gone on and I’m serio
usly looking at moving the dispatchers to the county [EMT] I totally believe in regionalization, before this, [Finance Commissioner Job] one of my previous jobs was I ran the Chamber [of Commerce] of Southern Saratoga County. We really harped on trying to merge government services and not duplicating things. We could move the dispatchers to the county level and not see any sort of major problem with service to the city.
Citizen Nancy: Now, when you say move it to the county, what do you mean?
Ken Ivins: If you call 911 you then go right the county that dispatches it to local people.
Right now, you call it and it goes to people downstairs [Police Dept] and that’s over $500,000-600,000 that the city [of Saratoga] is running it own dispatch service.
Citizen Nancy: But its different if you call from a cell phone and its different if you call form a land line.
Ken Ivins: That’s true, a cell phone call goes to the county and they eventually get it here anyway, you call from your home [landline phone] its dispatched right to downstairs. Lets put it all in one place, most of the county is out of the sheriff’s office in his main office. Putting it all in one place is going to make things a whole lot better. But Commissioner Kim disagrees with that. He says moving it all to the county we will get worse service.
Citizen Nancy: Regarding the South Side Recreation Center, do you think Mayor Johnson is wasting a lot of money on a recreation center?
Ken Ivins: No.
Citizen Nancy: Why?
Ken Ivins: It would be a waste of money not to do the Rec. Center. It was bonded before we got here and I’ve got numbers I could spend a half hour alone. Because it was all bonded before it was ready to be built, before it was ready to be designed, part of the bonding we could go back on. Adirondack Trust owns part of that bond and they would take it back with no penalties. The other portion of the bond, $4.3 million of the $6 million was done with a brokerage firm and so we can’t turn that in until 2017. Now we could invest it but right now investment rates are really terrible so even if they were really good, the difference is a $100,000 there plus we’ve spent already another $300,000 on design costs, surveys, traffic studies, soil testing, things of that sort.
Plus we’ve already paid into to those bonds another $300,000, if they had never bonded that piece we could have walked away from this without any problem but because we had already done that, essentially were getting nothing, its over a million dollars now, that we get absolutely nothing for, its down the drain.
Being that its already bonded there is no new additional cost to the tax payers until the building is actually open. Its just like go and take out a mortgage on a house but don’t build the house, you are paying on it so its not a new bill coming into your house whether you build it or not, you have the money sitting there until you actually get the house up.
Now, once they do get it up, you’re going to have some additional cost, heating, lighting and all that fun stuff but we can do other things with it now. For one thing, we’re paying rent to whole bunch of other communities to use their facilities. We can now bring in Tournaments, which is an economic development tool. People are in town, they’re going to go shopping, eat in our restaurants, even if its just Mc Donalds or whatever the case may be its going to bring in sales tax to our community. Plus it’s a place for kids to go and things for them to do.
I actually have a Recreation Department degree. I haven’t done anything with it for a long time but now I’m into computers and City Government and so on and so forth but if we don’t have a good solid recreation program for our kids then everything else is going to go up. Kids are gonna get in trouble their going to cause crime all that fun stuff. You need good solid stuff that’s over there [South Side of town] the other advantage of that site is that it is centrally located. Its reducing our carbon foot print.
In the long run, I think at worst break even and I think we might even make money as it goes along. Being that the project is bonded, our hands are tied, we were damned if we did damned if we don’t. Do you throw away over a million dollars of tax payer money for nothing? That’s wrong.
Citizen Nancy: What’s the best perk of your job?
Ken Ivins: My dog gets to be in parades.
###
If you would like to sign the petition to stop the discrimination of Saratoga Springs by Governor Paterson on the States VLT formula you may call Ken Ivins directly at 257-2057 or e-mail him at: ken@ivinsforfinance.com or simply stop by the Commissioners office at City Hall