Albany City Hall, where city officials are preparing a $10 million short-term borrowing. Photo: Navya Sriramaneni, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The City of Albany is preparing to sell $10 million in short-term notes to cover operating costs through the end of the year, including payroll, after reserves that normally bridge the city to January revenue ran down. Treasurer Darius Shahinfar told WAMC the borrowing is a way to “advance the payment, our sales tax payment from January, to get that now and meet our obligations.” The city notified investors it plans to sell the debt on Nov. 24.
Shahinfar described the instrument to CBS6 as a revenue anticipation note with a three-month term, to be repaid from sales-tax receipts early in 2027, and said it is not part of the 2027 budget process. WAMC reported the city expects to repay the notes by February. Albany last issued debt to cover operating expenses in 2016, both outlets reported.
The cost of the loan was described differently by the two newsrooms. Shahinfar told WAMC it would run somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 in interest, depending on the rate the city gets and on what it earns by investing money it would otherwise spend to make ends meet. CBS6 reported that city officials anticipate the loan will cost roughly $100,000 in issuance costs and interest. The city’s most recent monthly cash-balance report showed just over $8.5 million in the general fund in September, WAMC said.
The borrowing lands as Albany works through a wider budget squeeze. WAMC noted that recent reports from the state comptroller put the city’s gap for this year at $26 million, $4 million higher than city estimates this summer, and a projected $35 million gap for 2027, and that the comptroller ranked Albany the second-most fiscally stressed municipality in the state. Shahinfar told CBS6 he had flagged the possibility of a loan in his second-quarter financial report, a period when the city typically runs tight on cash, and that officials decided last week to go forward because the balances used in past years are gone.
Common Council member Deirdre Brodie, who had criticized the administration on social media for not talking more openly about the sale and about the city being “broke,” told WAMC the borrowing was “unfortunately, the best of the worst decisions we have in front of us.” The need to borrow to stay solvent was real, she said; “it’s how we got there and how we’re not talking about it” that troubled her. In her CBS6 interview, she said the treasurer’s second-quarter report in September had stated that with proper cash management the city could avoid going to the markets in 2026, and that “to have that quick of an about face in literally six weeks was pretty shocking.”
Mayor Dorcey Applyrs told CBS6 that calling the city broke was a “poor choice of words” and that “fear mongering is not informed leadership.” She said $20 million in state aid had helped the city avoid a loan earlier in the year, that cash-flow pressure at this point in the calendar is “nothing new,” and that soliciting the note was “a responsible thing to do” to meet the city’s obligations. Asked about a trip to the SOMOS legislative conference in Puerto Rico, Applyrs said the travel was “not paid using taxpayer dollars” and that she needed to be present as mayor of the capital city as a new state delegation takes shape.
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