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In a 6-3 vote, Rochester City Council approved Mayor Malik Evans’ more than $680 million budget, which is $27 million less than a year ago. Councilmembers Kim Smith, Stanley Martin, and Mary Lupien opposed the spending plan in the vote Tuesday night.
The 2025-26 budget, which totals roughly $680,500,000, has the most funding going to police and environmental services. Undistributed funds, which includes employee and retirement benefits, and other miscellaneous expenditures, remain the largest expense. With no increase to the property tax levy, the overall decrease in this year’s budget comes from efforts to offset the loss of American Rescue Plan Act funds. Several departments saw cuts, including neighborhood and business development (33 percent) and youth services (11 percent).
“There is still much work to do, but I’m proud to pass a balanced budget which continues to prioritize our essential city services, resources for neighborhoods, housing and infrastructure projects, and access to opportunities for our residents,” said Council President Miguel Meléndez Jr. in a statement.
Budget criticism largely came from the body’s progressive bloc. Martin argued for higher pay for frontline workers, while Smith, Lupien and Martin called for $500,000 in reserved funds to be used toward a feasibility study for a public energy utility, a key focus of Metro Justice’s Rochester for Energy Democracy.
“Mayor Evans, as finance chair, you voted ‘no’ on Mayor Lovely Warren’s last budget, and I agreed with you. You said it didn’t go far enough or fast enough,” said Lupien during Tuesday night’s vote. “Since taking office, none of your budgets have gone far enough or fast enough, and this year’s budget fails to meet the urgency and the scale of the intersecting crises that we have in this community.”
While Evans has touted programs like Buy the Block and modular affordable homes in efforts to promote homeownership, Lupien took aim at the mayor’s housing policies, claiming not enough is being done to promote availability and affordability. At a rally hosted by Rochester Grants Pass Resistance, the councilmember—who is challenging Evans in the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary—spoke on the budget while calling for greater resources for housing.
“We don’t have enough shelter. We don’t have enough housing,” said Lupien. “All of this affordable housing that (Evans is) claiming is not for your people. It’s to subsidize people from the suburbs to come back into the city.”
Those who voted in favor, like Councilmember Mitch Gruber, noted funding city services given the loss of ARPA funding – where the city stands to lose approximately $20 million.
“We knew what the expiration date was on ARPA dollars, and unlike a lot of other cities, I think we’ve planned very strategically and thoughtfully about what happens at the sunsetting of those funds,” stated Gruber during a press conference regarding the budget on Wednesday. “Will there be the same exact services that were offered during ARPA when those dollars aren’t there? No, but we have to learn from what we did during those last couple years and make sure that a slimmer version of those services are available to serve the same number of people. That’s the hard work of budgeting.”
City Council has also approved $250,000 in housing and emergency assistance for LGBTQIA+, immigrant and refugee communities, along with $45,000 for the city’s Culture and Heritage Committees, including the creation of an LGBTQIA+ Culture and Heritage Committee. Other approvals include $220,000 for programs that assist homeowner repairs and senior aging; $80,000 for the development of the Thomas P. Ryan R-Center playground and $63,000 for summer literacy programs.
“Even with looming action from the federal government, we were still able to make sure that we provided services,” stated Evans. “Not one single service was cut from the budget, and not one single person was laid off from this budget.”
The new city budget will take effect on July 1.
Narm Nathan is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s inaugural cohort.
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