Troy’s City Council Chambers were overflowing Thursday night with several controversial items on the agenda and an annual legislative address.
The four-hour meeting began with the first of two public hearings regarding the development of tiny homes at the former home of Leonard Hospital, which closed in 1995 and was demolished in 2020. The 86-unit tiny home development at 74 New Turnpike Road would be age-restricted senior housing with rent somewhere between $1,300 and $1,800 per month, per unit. No public comments were made.
The council also received the 2023 financial statement audit, which was submitted late. Two other audits, a single audit of federal expenditures and a single audit of New York State Department of Transportation expenditures, were delivered. Independent auditor Alan Walther, representing The Bonadio Group, says the city received an adverse opinion on government-wide financial statements — meaning the statements do not “fairly” present the financial position for the city.
“Our audit opinions, typically, for a municipality of your size, all the audit opinions are typically unmodified, okay, the city does receive an adverse opinion at the government wide level, because you have not there was a decision made, literally, 20 plus years ago, not to depreciate capital assets, and because of that, you get an adverse opinion most, again, of the cities of your size or bigger that we audit, are depreciating their capital assets. They are receiving an unmodified opinion,” Walther said. “We do have material weaknesses sometimes again, you know, we've done the city's audit for a number of years, typical years we don't have a material weakness.”
Walther highlighted the hiring of a comptroller.
“We are confident that for 2024 audit will get back on track and will be issued and complete no later than September 30, which is the which is the due date. I think the audit for 2022, which we also performed, was issued in August of 2023 so our expectation is that the 2023 lateness of the audit is a one-time thing, and then 2024 we'll get back on track,” Walther said.
The audit was delayed as the city struggled to reconcile accounts and close its 2023 books because of accounting errors made by two previous comptrollers and an outside accounting firm that submitted incorrect information to the state in 2024. Last month, the council approved the hiring of Jack Krokos as the city’s new comptroller. BST & Co., an independent accounting firm, is also still working for the city, supporting efforts to catch up on 2024 financial reports after the city went without a comptroller for roughly six months.
Discussing the report, Walther says the city’s property taxes are complicated because it collects taxes for the Troy City School District, Rensselaer County, and the Downtown Business Improvement District. Walther says that affects multiple accounts within the financial statements and should be completed timelier for 2024. He adds federal awards were not recorded correctly, often being miscategorized as state aid.
Councilors did not have many questions regarding the audit and later voted unanimously to accept it.
Council President Sue Steele took time during the regular meeting to deliver her annual legislative address, her second. The Democrat used the speech to highlight her opposition to a new home for city hall and what she alleges is poor communication between the executive and legislative branch.
“Our residents deserve transparency and honesty from their elected leaders, and we must work to ensure they stay informed about what's happening at City Hall. The city's finances remain the most pressing issue for the City Council in 2025 there continue to be serious issues involving the city's finances, including questions about the budget, missing quarterly reports, insufficient money in the city's contingency fund, inaccurate figures and overdue audits of the city's finances. We also continue to see challenges with meeting our financial obligations.
Council President Pro Tem. Tom Casey of District 6 says a standalone city hall is attainable.
“All across this country, you see beautiful and historic city halls, and I find it interesting that some people think that that's no longer attainable. I think Troy should have its own and beautiful and unique city hall,” Casey said.
First-term Republican Mayor Carmella Mantello has defended her approach to communicating with the council. She calls Steele’s speech “disappointing.”
“Typical local election speech, you know, you say you're gonna work together and you go the total opposite,” Mantello said. “Very disappointing.”
Steele praised investments in the city’s greenspace, parks, Neighborhood Improvement Projects, pools, and pushed for work to ramp up on replacing lead contaminated water service lines — and urged residents to inventory their lines.
“The replacement of lead lines is critical to the future of our city. The mayor and the entire city council agree replacement of lead service lines must happen faster,” Steele said. “According to our public utilities department, the inventory of lead lines only increased six percent in 2024 of the 12,500 water service lines in the city, the status of approximately 5,500 lines are still unknown.”
Casey, a Republican, says last year, nearly everyone was new to the council and figuring out the innerworkings of city politics, and that should not used be a criticism.
“I think there's a lot of things that we've done in a bipartisan fashion, and we work well together,” Casey said. “I think one thing that I could say we could do to improve things between the majority and the minority and the administration would be a little better communication, but we're all new at this, so I think things will get better in the new year.”
The next regular meeting is April 3rd.
