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Syracuse City budget hearing details neighborhood development spending, housing strategy timing
Summary
City staff told councilors the Department of Neighborhood and Business Development’s budgets rely heavily on grant funds and targeted lending, while a phased housing strategy will need roughly $2–2.5 million annually to stay on schedule for neighborhoods in 2025–2029.
Michael Collins, commissioner for the Department for Neighborhood Business Development, told Syracuse City councilors at a budget hearing that the department’s two budgets under review — neighborhood business development and planning and sustainability — total roughly $1.3 million and $390,000 respectively and rely on multiple grant and lending programs to multiply city investment.
Collins said the department staffs roughly 33 people across the divisions covered in the hearing and taps about 16 funding sources and more than 30 grant programs. “We are able to take less than $2,000,000 and do more than 30 times that amount of work within the community,” Collins said, describing the leverage created by city grants, loans and partner investments.
Collins outlined SEDCO’s lending work as a local backstop when traditional banks will not finance projects, describing about $1.8 million in lending activity overseen by commercial-underwriting staff. He said that Sedco’s underwriting aims to expand…
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