Albany Data Stories

09/17/2026

We are co-presenting at the Upper Washington Ave Neighborhood association next week. We'll be presenting background and analysis on the City's financial crisis (debt, liabilities, spending) and give a preview of what we're looking for with the release of the City's proposed budget on October 1st.

On August 15th the City of Albany Mayoral Administration released its 2026 midyear report. At Albany Data Stories we are likely one of many people and organizations that have been interested in seeing this report.  The City is in a financial crisis and the Midyear Report will help everyone understa...

09/02/2026

We are 4 weeks away from the release of Albany Mayor Dr. Dorcey Applyrs' 2027 proposed budget on October 1st. We blocked off our calendars to review the budget when it's released and we will be posting our feedback asap

We're sharing this post from October 2025 as a reminder of how we analyzed last year's budget. It was a much simpler time and who could possibly have foreseen the City's crisis?!

Last year we analyzed the budget book and made around 125 comments on the pdf, released the commented pdf and our analysis of the concerning themes. We'll be doing the same thing with the 2027 proposed budget. Our hope is that the 2027 proposed budget has less hyperbole and more attention to the huge concerns. Have particular areas that we should focus on? Drop us a DM or comment here.

In early October 2025 Mayor Kathy Sheehan announced the City of Albany's 2026 Proposed Budget.  The budget outlines nearly $229 million of revenues and expenditures, a growth of 3.2% of spending from the City’s 2025 Adopted Budget of $222 million.

08/25/2026

Couple of quick updates.

1. The City Treasurer is obligated to release quarterly reports on the City's finances. We are waiting for the Q2/2026 report to see some of the detailed numbers behind our crisis and to see the Treasurer's narrative on our current position. Will we see a narrative that aligns with how the Mayor's Administration has been describing the crisis and required actions? Unfortunately this report is late. Last year's report came out on 8/2/2025. This year's report is now over 3 weeks late (8 weeks past the close of the second quarter).

2. Going back to May we were requesting Albany Mayor Dr. Dorcey Applyrs' Administration bring in the Comptroller's Division of Local Govt Accountability to assist the City. The more brains the better, especially expertise in dealing with financial crisis. Now that the Administration has _finally_ requested Comptroller's assistance our new concern is how that expertise gets used and communicated. Or how that expertise gets filtered and/or not released. We sent the following note to our contact at the Comptroller to request access to any report-outs.

08/22/2026

This is Karl from ADS and thought that I would share a few thoughts on last Wednesday's Common Council Finance Committee meeting. Replay here - https://www.youtube.com/live/ZmHYTdGovL4.

In the meeting, representatives from Albany Mayor Dr. Dorcey Applyrs's Administration reviewed the Administration's midyear financial report and the Common Council had an opportunity to ask questions.

We released the ADS response to the midyear report last Monday and I used that response to speak during the public comment period, emphasizing a number of things -
1) There are many holes in the midyear report and we have numerous (20+) questions that we want asked to fill in the holes
2) The lack of recurring budget cuts through the remainder of the year is exceptionally concerning, we can't wait until the 2027 to make hard decisions
3) We are getting distracted by continuously blaming our problems on tax-exempt property. Rather the main root cause of our problems is the sum of a host of bad financial decisions over the last 10-15 years
4) Getting us out of our financial crisis will require leadership courage to make and execute tough decisions.

How did the meeting go? Here's the good news. The Common Council is stepping up. Going back to last year one of my concerns was the positioning of the CC, somewhere between an inability to enact any power over the budgeting process and learned helplessness. That changed in this meeting bigtime - Keegan, Farrell, Balarin, Brodie, Powell, Zamer, Flynn - all were asking really good questions, following up, challenging the Administration reps.

In addition, the media is engaged. TU, WAMC, Spectrum, CBS6 - they're present and we've seen good reporting post-meeting. Media attention is a tool for accountability.

Here's the bad news. 3 thoughts:
* When will there be good news? Every day is a new, bad surprise - and typically surprises where there isn't an answer. Just one example, Council Member Zamer brough up the recent $80m lawsuit from a wrongly convicted man which will likely have significant consequences on the City's finances as we right a wrong.
* The Administration is not moving fast enough and is not making any difficult decisions - when I hear "We are looking at all options" as an answer it's 10/10 concerning. It's August. The crisis was publicly acknowledged in March. Tick tick tick tick tick....
* The Comptroller is coming in but what will they actually be doing and is there time for their work to be impactful, given that we're 6 weeks from the release of the 2027 budget. ADS readers will recall that we (and many others) have been requesting Comptroller assistance since May - we have wasted three months.

Lastly, I was concerned that the entire Common Council did not show up. This is _the most important subject_ being discussed with ripple effects across every aspect of what our City can and cannot do. As a CC Member you're either engaged or you're not. If you're not engaged and participating then, frankly, you're not qualified to be a part of any budgetary discussions.

08/19/2026

A departure from our ongoing analysis of the City's finances. We looked at the data coming out of the SeeClickFix system, Albany's system for reporting and tracking non-emergency issues such as potholes, snow blockages, nuisance issues and more.

We found a number of things:
1. usage of SCF has dramatically gone up which we believe is a good thing - SCF makes it incredibly easy to report an issue and to see the status
2. examining the data helps us understand the types of reports and how those reports change by month and season
3. we can understand rates of closure and how those vary by neighborhoods
4. we get some baseline data that we can use for future comparisons

We also made the data available on a google drive in an Excel file for anyone's examination. Lastly, we are interested in additional questions that we can answer with the SCF data - if any come to mind feel free to drop those in the comments and we'll see what we can do.

https://albanydatastories.com/albanys-seeclickfix

08/17/2026

We are releasing our first draft of our review of the Mayor's 2026 Midyear Financial Plan Update. This is a long document, there's a lot to comment on and a lot of context that we wedge in. In addition, we provide a number of questions (in bold/italic) that we hope the Common Council asks the Administration during the Common Council Finance Committee meeting on 8/19.

Within the report you will see a link to a copy of the Midyear Report pdf stored on Google drive. We have made various comments on the pdf file, we used this for our opening research.

Please ask questions, make comments, disagree, etc in the comments and we will give you our best response.

On August 15th the City of Albany Mayoral Administration released its 2026 midyear report. At Albany Data Stories we are likely one of many people and organizations that have been interested in seeing this report.  The City is in a financial crisis and the Midyear Report will help everyone understa...

08/15/2026

At Albany Data Stories we have been analyzing and commenting on the City’s financial position since the 2026 proposed budget was released in October 2025. We have made a first pass analysis of the midyear report and have significant concerns. We will be releasing our response to the midyear report on Monday.

08/13/2026

As we continue to examine the City's finances we are monitoring and awaiting a number of events coming up. To give you a sense of what we're paying attention to:

1. Mid-year update to the financial plan - 8/15/2026 - "On or before August fifteenth, the Commissioner of Administrative Services, or their designee, shall submit to the Mayor and the Common Council a mid-year update to the financial plan adopted pursuant to this article. Such update shall include revised estimates of receipts and disbursements for the current fiscal year and the ensuing fiscal year, and an explanation of any changes from the adopted financial plan." This is an update created via recent legislation without any precedent to build on. We will be looking at the timeliness, the content and any accompanying communication to the Common Council Finance Committee which might happen on 8/19.

2. Q2/2026 Interim Financial Report - last year this came out on 8/2/2025. The prior year this came out on 7/24/2024. This is owned by the Treasurer and will show up here - https://www.albanyny.gov/462/Financial-Statements-Documents. We are interested in seeing all of the spending and revenue trends through the first half of the year.

3. 2025 Audited Financial Statement - last year's report (https://www.albanyny.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/319) came out on 9/30/2025 - UHY was the independent auditor, we are not sure who is doing the auditing this year

4. Comptroller's Fiscal Stress Test for 2025 - September or October? - https://www.osc.ny.gov/local-government/fiscal-monitoring. We have created our estimate of where we are at (https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EcqQTxdUo/), we want to see the official end-of-2025 stress test score

5. City's financial data from Local Law L (https://www.albanyny.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/3279...) - date unknown - we want to see how the City functions (Treasurer, Auditor, Mayor) abide by the financial data disclosure

6. 2027 budget - 10/1/2026 - this is the big one. What will Albany Mayor Dr. Dorcey Applyrs first budget proposal look like?

A lot of events coming up to help us understand our current financial state and how the Administration is making financial decisions.

Edit: messed up the numbering on the bulleted list, fixed it

07/30/2026

A reader reminded us of our work in summer 2025 analyzing the City's School Speed Zone camera ticketing program. We are sharing the second of two pieces that we wrote on the subject. In this piece we examined the bad agreement that we signed with the vendor, Sensys Gatso. We compared the City's agreement with Gatso to comparable agreements signed between other cities and Gatso. We identified that the City of Albany's agreement was by far the worst agreement of the lot - our agreement disproportionally shares revenue with Gatso. As we measured the impact over the 5 year agreement between the City and Gatso (an agreement that we cannot terminate), we conservatiely estimate the lost revenue to the City as $10m, roughly $2m/yr.

This is what happens when we don't make thoughtful, data-driven decisions.

And lastly, to put this in perspective, the City's school camera program likely generated between $5-6 million in revenue for Gatso in 2025. Sensys Gatso, a Swedish company, generated $80 million in total revenue in 2025. So the City of Albany was reponsible for 6-7% of Gatso's global revenue. Hopefully they sent us a thank you card and a fruit basket.

In July 2025 we reported on the fiscal side of Albany’s School Speed Camera program, noting that there is a significant gap between the projected and actual revenue for budget year 2025.  We outlined how school speed camera revenue would fall between $3.4 to $4.0 million short of budgeted revenue...

07/28/2026

We're the citizens, it's our money that the City is spending, we should have access to the data regarding decisions.

When we look a decision from the City’s Administration it's a simple lens that we look through:
1. Is it communicated? (is the information made available)
2. Is it explained? (does the info include justifications, explanations and details)
3. Is it rational? (can we pressure test the decisions using math or other evaluation methods)

In May the City of Albany and Albany Mayor Dr. Dorcey Applyrs announced a total of $7.6 of 2026 budget savings - https://www.albanyny.gov/m/newsflash/Home/Detail/684. Our goal was to put the $7.6m of decisions to the three question test.

On July 21st we described our journey to get access to the phase 2 savings report, a document that would (hopefully) detail the decisions associated with the $7.6 million of savings identified by the Administration. We have requested the document via email and through a FOIL; we still have not received a response to our request.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HxCf847m5/

We wanted to build on our analysis from May 11th where we reviewed the phase 1 savings analysis of $5.3. In that analysis we had concerns about the decisions and their presentation.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E51KBvVKW/

Here's the good news - we did acquire a copy of the Phase 1/2 savings report through a friend of ADS and we can now examine the savings. We have made images of the three page report and attached those images.

We’ll share 5 points that are representative of broader concerns that we have:

1. In our May report on the phase 1 decisions we noted concerns with the phase 1 numbers. For example the report had savings numbers that didn't reconcile with the 2026 approved budget. None of the phase 1 numbers have changed in the latest document.

2. 20% of the aggregate savings ($1.5m on $7.6m) is driven by overtime. The Treasurer's Q1 report (https://www.albanyny.gov/DocumentCenter/View/15001/2026-1st-Quarter-Financial-Reportpdf) noted that OT through Q1 had already exceeded budget: “Overtime expenditures (across all City functions)... totaled $3.55 million through the first quarter of 2026, an increase of $190 thousand (5.7%) compared to the same period in 2025. Year-to-date expenditures represent 26.8% of the annual non-reimbursable overtime budget.”

Savings from mid-year overtime cuts may not be viable, especially when the City is already over budget. For example, the phase 2 savings cuts $600k from the $1.7 million of Department of General Services budgeted overtime, or 35%. If that was a full year number that might be achievable. Given that DGS spent $450k through Q1, DGS must cut nearly half of their OT through the last 3 quarters ($600k on $1.25m). Is this possible? We are skeptical.

3. Cuts related to “Salaries” are $1.8m (24% of $7.6m) across 10 departments. Are these newly created positions in the 2026 budget that are being pulled back? Open positions that aren't being filled? A savings concept with details to be worked out later? What work do these positions do, is there anything that won't be done or services that won't be performed? We don't know the answer to any of these questions.

4. Tree Services - we're cutting $350k (5% of overall savings) from this line item in the 2026 budget. On the surface it looks like hard decisions are being made. However, let's look at the context. In 2024 the City spent $1.07 million on Tree Services. The 2025 budget for Tree Services - $1.3m. 2026 budget for Tree Services - $1.55m. The Tree Service budget grew 44% in two years. A $350k cut in Tree Services takes our spending down to $1.2m which is still an 11% growth in our Tree Service spending between 2024 and 2026.

5. "HWC" and a $90k savings? A reasonable question is "what's HWC"? The phase 2 savings include $90k for "HWC" in the DGS budget. We tracked this down - HWC is Hazardous Waste Collection. The periodic Hazard Waste Collection days to collect paint cans, batteries, etc appear to be cancelled for 2026. However, that's just a guess with the low level of detail provided. This theme of lack of detail extends across numerous line items in both phase 1 and phase 2 savings.

Let’s evaluate the communication of the phase 1 and 2 cuts, going back to our 3 question test.

1. Is it communicated? No. Phase 1 details are not available on the City’s website. Phase 2 information was not proactively made available, not posted on the City's website, not made available on email request, not responded to in a FOIL.

2. Is it explained? No. Neither Phase 1 nor phase 2 decisions receive any explanation on the justifications or impact, and the data is obfuscated with budget numbers, acronyms and department codes.

3. Is it rational? As we look at the savings projections there is a strong likelihood that the savings will not be achieved.

Why does this matter? There are other tough decisions that will happen in the future; the City’s finances and the 2027 budget will be under significant pressure. The Administration drives the bus on the budget - the decisions and the communication. If the Administration is not practiced at making decisions and communicating those decisions related to the 7-figure 2026 budget savings, we will get the same behaviors when the stakes get higher in the 9-figure next budgeting cycle.