Total budget
$494.2M
All 19 funds, two years (Jul 2025–Jun 2027). Sum of fund tables ties to the stated total to the dollar.
City Budget Watch
Albany's half-billion-dollar budget, verified line by line.
Every figure on this page was recomputed from the BN 2025–2027 adopted budget's own fund tables and the Q2 2026 financial update. The tables foot. The story is in what they show — and what the summaries leave out.
Per resident
$4,385/yr
Gross budget per resident per year (56,348 people). Includes double-counted internal transfers and reserves.
GF structural gap
$2.2M
The City Manager's own budget message: current services exceed current revenues by $2.2M in the General Fund.
Property tax levy
$79.2M
Two-year levy — about $1,844 per household per year before county, schools, and other districts.
Follow the money
Where it comes from, where it goes, and how fast it's moving.
Where the $494M goes, two-year totals ($M)
People (personnel)$162.7M
~452 FTE salaries + benefits
Construction & equipment$151.7M
Sewer, water, streets, parks, waterfront
Supplies & contracts$112.8M
Materials & services
Transfers between funds$31.0M
Internal moves — double-counted
Loan payments$19.1M
Debt service
Reserves & contingencies$16.8M
Savings, not spending
Transfers and reserves are shown in gray because they aren't service spending: transfers are internal double-counts and reserves are savings budgeted as if they were expenditures.
Of every General Fund dollar ($122.4M core-services fund)
Fire & EMS (incl. levy)39¢ · $47.9M
Police (incl. levy)38¢ · $46.9M
Administration9¢ · $11.5M
Library7¢ · $8.1M
Planning4¢ · $4.6M
Court, code, fire & life safety3¢ · $3.4M
77 cents of every General Fund dollar goes to police and fire. Every conversation about the structural deficit is, underneath, a conversation about public safety costs.
Spending pace at Q2 (Dec 31, 2025) — even pace would be 25%
General Fund25.2%
$30.9M of $122.4M — exactly on pace
Internal services21.1%
$11.3M of $53.6M
Parks & Recreation16.5%
$5.1M of $30.9M — capital timing
Other funds14.8%
$14.8M of $100.3M — grants & capital lag
Enterprise (sewer/water/storm)13.9%
$24.3M of $174.9M — big projects still in procurement
The dashed line is the even-pace benchmark. Under-spending is concentrated in capital projects still in procurement — appropriations sized in 2025 dollars, eroding against construction inflation while they wait.
Watch items
The five numbers worth tracking through 2027.
#1
The $2.2M hole
The budget message says current service levels exceed revenues by $2.2M in the General Fund, and that the City Services Fee “will need to be increased … or services will need to be cut back.” That sentence frames the next budget cycle.
#2
Administration doubled
The GF Administration program grew from $5.4M to $11.5M (+112%); HR +72%, IT +51% citywide — against 12% overall growth. Much of central overhead is billed back to utility ratepayers through internal service charges.
#3
Interest-earnings mystery money
GF investment earnings were budgeted at $282,500 for two years; actual earnings hit $1,228,662 in the first six months — 4.3× the full budget. Systematic lowballing creates recurring money that skips the appropriation debate.
#4
The slow capital burn
Enterprise funds spent 13.9% of their two-year budgets in the first 25% of the biennium. Roughly $28M of capital appropriations are running behind pace while construction inflation continues.
#5
The CARA dividend vs. the $3.1M
CARA's sunset returns $1.4–1.7M/yr to the General Fund — most of the structural gap. Staff also identified $3.1M of further borrowing capacity, parked in reserves for a fall 2025 board decision. Every dollar used delays the dividend.
What checked out
Every published fund table foots (±$1 rounding). The 19 fund budgets sum exactly to $494,167,975. Intrafund transfers tie to the dollar, and the citywide transfer ledger reconciles once the ARA's $668,300 inflow is counted. The mechanics are sound — the findings are about timing, disclosure, and structure.
Fine print findings
Where the budget's own numbers don't quite meet.
None of these is a scandal. Each is a presentation gap that makes the documents harder for residents to read — and each has a specific, answerable question behind it.
Biennium “actuals” columns double-count beginning fund balances (both years' opening balances are summed). Provable to the dollar in the ARA document; the City document uses the same convention.
The narrative's net-budget figure ($479M) and expenditure total ($472.2M) don't tie to the fund tables under any convention we could reconstruct — gaps of roughly $1.7–2M.
Budgeted property tax receipts ($80.8M) exceed the stated levy ($79.2M) and far exceed levy × 98.6% collection (~$78.1M). Prior-year collections presumably fill the ~$2.6M gap; no reconciliation is published.
Citywide transfers-in exceed transfers-out by exactly $668,300 — precisely the ARA's budgeted transfer into the City. Internal transfers otherwise tie perfectly, as do intrafund transfers ($7,317,800 both directions).
Go deeper
The full coverage behind this page.
Plain-language explainer
The whole budget explained like you're a neighbor, not an accountant — with per-household math.
Ten-year reconciliation
2016 IFMAP promises vs. 2026 reality: assessed value, staffing, personnel costs.
Executive summary & risk matrix
The full city-wide audit synthesis across all seven source documents.
ARA / CARA money trail
The urban-renewal dashboard: loans, forgiveness schedules, audit timing, the sunset dividend.
Search the source library
Find the adopted budget, Q2 update, and audited statements behind every figure here.
Open records desk
Use any figure on this page to shape the next public records request.
Money-flow workbench
Trace individual charges, contracts, payments, grants, and loans across records and entities.