Mayor Kim Ecklund updates the city council on state funding received after asking about it for the last two years. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

For the past two years the city has been waiting to receive a promised $1.3 million from the state of New York.

Last Wednesday, they finally received the notification that it was in the bank.

At Monday night’s City Council work session, Mayor Kim Ecklund said the city has been hounding the state about these funds for the past two years.

“We were a little bit surprised because the last contact we had was that it was in process and moving in the direction and the next thing you know it hit the bank,” Ecklund said.

Ecklund expressed the city’s thanks to Tim Ryan and Chris Grant from the state, along with her own personal thanks to City Comptroller Erika Thomas, Corporation Counsel Elliot Raimondo and City Clerk Jennifer John and their teams for continuing to be relentless with the state to secure these funds.

“To give a little history of that, this $1.3 million was the original FRB, which was the Financial Restructuring Board proposal that was brought forward back in 2019,” Ecklund said. “What this is is getting our employees off of lifetime health insurance and Medicare reimbursement. It was proposed to the state that it would help us reimburse our costs of getting those employees off of lifetime health insurance, retirees only.”

These specific expenses far exceed the $1.3 million, but Ecklund added that had they not gotten the costs it would be detrimental long term because the costs escalate, for both the tax burden and decrease in fund balance, which the $1.3 million will be going into. She said that in the 2024 budget there was $1.3 million budgeted for, but with no updated contract or information on it. That created a revenue hole in the 2024 budget that had to be paid out of the fund balance to balance that year’s budget.

“This is huge and I think great work and they really do need to be commended for the work they did with the state, so thank you very much,” Ecklund said.