Syracuse City budget staff say director job will be posted, cite fringe‑benefit increases and county procurement role

Budget staff for Syracuse City said they will post a permanent budget director position within the week and described projected FY2026 increases that they attributed largely to underbudgeted fringe benefits in FY2025.

The comments came during a budget briefing in which Office of Management and Budget staff introduced team members, outlined responsibilities, and answered council questions about staffing, fringe costs and procurement procedures. The presentation noted the OMB umbrella includes purchasing and the Division of Equity, Compliance and Social Impact (DESE), and that the city is implementing OpenGov for solicitations and budget reporting.

The budget presenter said the city plans to post the permanent director job "within the week to get it posted publicly, and to solicit candidates." Staff also identified OpenGov as the intended platform for handling RFPs and related solicitations, with trainings for council members planned after budget review.

Staff summarized that most of the increases in the three bureaus are in contracted services and fringe‑benefit lines rather than base salary increases. The presenter said the apparent jump reflects amounts that were underbudgeted in FY2025 and were corrected for FY2026; on rough math, the Office of Management and Budget is seeing "maybe a 10% increase, maybe a little bit more than that, 10 to 15%" overall. Purchase staffing was described as largely flat, with a roughly 3% change in salaries in that division.

Budget staff pointed to a specific line they cited as contributing to discrepancies: the $541,700 "SIRRA"/fringe line. For the DESE line, staff said the FY2026 true fringe amount is about $188,000 compared with $122,000 shown in the FY2025 adopted budget; staff explained the FY2025 figure had been underbudgeted. Staff noted typical benefits add roughly 50% on top of a base salary ("if you have a $60,000 a year position, add 50% on top of that, that position is actually $90,000 to $100,000"), and described benefits cost ballparks of $25,000 to $30,000 per position.

On the FY2025 midyear shortfall that prompted a midyear budget transfer, staff said the issue was identified early in FY2025 when actuals were higher than budgeted and the plan all along was to include fixes in a midyear transfer. Staff estimated the midyear adjustment was "somewhere between half a million to a million dollars." They described the underbudgeting as a result of working across different modules of the city's AS400 financial system and manual retirement calculations tied to New York State retirement percentages.

Procurement questions focused on how the city obtains quotes and whether the county handles the final purchasing steps. Anne Marie Deegan, First Deputy Commissioner of Finance, said the county issues purchase orders and shops out requisitions based on criteria the city provides. "We submit a really good quote, the buyers on the county, they then shop it out based on the criteria that we've provided them and then they send out the purchase orders from there," Deegan said. Deegan and budget staff also said current thresholds generally require three verbal quotes for purchases above $1,500 and that the city is pushing for more written quotes.

Staff described common waiver reasons for sole‑source or limited competition purchases — for example, a police department request for a particular tire type for patrol cars — but said all purchase orders are issued through the county regardless of waiver or contract status. Staff also said Purchase Division staff have been integral to the city's OpenGov rollout and have provided trainings for departments.

Next steps reported at the briefing included posting the permanent budget director position, continuing the OpenGov rollout with planned trainings, and incorporating corrected fringe figures into the midyear budget transfer. Staff said they will continue to refine budgeting processes to reduce similar underbudgeting in future fiscal years.

For items the briefing identified but did not resolve — including the exact midyear transfer amount and timing of the OpenGov full rollout — staff said follow‑up and supporting documentation would be provided to the council.