BATAVIA
City debt greatly reduced to $366,000
$1.6 million surplus fueled turnaround
BATAVIA — After three years of operating deficits that climbed to $2.5 million, the City Council on Monday got good news from its auditor with a $1.6 million surplus in the 2007-2008 year that ended March 31.
The report from Freed Maxick Battaglia detailed how a drop in expenses and increases in water and sewer rates reduced the city’s debt to $366,000.
The turnaround from last year’s $1.8 million deficit is credited largely to payments from Batavia Downs Gaming and an 8.5 percent increase in real property taxes.
The meeting could have been tempered with bad news, but representatives of the Mall Merchants Association were not present as some had expected.
The owners of property in the downtown Batavia City Centre Mall voted last month to sue the city for repairs to the roof, floors and leaking silo-shaped entrances.
The 32-year-old facility, once known as the Genesee Country Mall, has had a troubled history in part because the public areas are owned and maintained by the city, and the shops and offices are the property of individual owners.
In recent years the spaces once home to 36 stores have been taken over by a dozen medical-related services, four offices, four eating places and only four retailers.
The Council did bow to one of the merchant association’s requests. It voted to develop specifications for an outdoor sign to list tenants. The sign was removed five years ago during construction when part of the mall was converted to municipal offices.
Fourth Ward Councilman F. Robert Bialkowski, who has denied a conflict of interest because his wife is the mall manager, abstained from the vote.
The Council at its twice-delayed August meeting approved:
• An intermunicipal agreement with Genesee County to consolidate police dispatch and records management at the new sheriff’s Communications Center on Park Road.
The long-debated and once-controversial merger moves city dispatchers to the Administration Building two miles from downtown. It is estimated that the move would save the city more than $100,000 a year, largely in salaries.
The Genesee County Legislature is scheduled to give its approval at a special meeting today. The merger will be effective on Labor Day.
• An agreement with Gordon J. Phillips of Rochester, whose $585,757 bid was the lowest on the Ellicott Street Streetscape Project. The work largely deals with aesthetic improvements to the major thoroughfare, which is also State Route 63.
