By Staff Reporter
NIAGARA FALLS — Niagara Falls homeowners won’t pay more to have their garbage and recycling picked up next year. The City Council made sure of that this month, voting 5-0 to keep the annual refuse and recycling user fee at $181 for a single residential tote. What the vote didn’t settle is who covers the difference, and that question now passes to Mayor Robert Restaino, whose 2027 budget is due by Nov. 1.
By the city’s own projections, holding the fee flat leaves about $1.12 million in garbage costs that the fee won’t cover, money that will have to come from the general fund, the Niagara Gazette reported.
The vote
The administration had proposed raising the fee by $2.18 a year, to $183.18, an increase of about 1.2%. At the Oct. 7 meeting, Council Member David Zajac amended the resolution to keep the 2026 rate. His amendment set the revenue to be collected at “77.9% of the program’s total estimated expenses (for 2027),” according to the Gazette. Just over a half-dozen residents spoke at the public hearing, and all of them opposed the increase.
Council Chair Brian Archie said the council was comfortable absorbing the cost. “Listening to the residents, we didn’t think it would be an opportune time to raise it,” Mr. Archie said, according to the Gazette. “A majority of the council believes the surplus allows us to do that without a negative impact on the budget.”
What the controller warned
Acting City Controller Sean Bird laid out the numbers in a required yearly report to the council. “The result of our combined analysis projects waste and recycling expenses at $5,114,875 for 2027,” he wrote, citing a joint analysis by the city and the Niagara County Division of Environment and Solid Waste. The city’s contract with its hauler, Casella, calls for 3% increases each year, he told council members.
Mr. Bird was careful about his role. He wrote that “by design, revenue from the User Fee was not intended to capture the full expense of city waste and recycling services.” He said “a modest increase” would help ease the “strain on the city’s general fund operations,” but insisted the proposed increase “was not a recommendation,” the Gazette reported.
The Niagara Express broke down the proposal before the vote. At $183.18, the fee would have raised about $4.166 million, with $943,879 coming from the general fund. That would have covered about 81% of the cost through the fee and about 19% through taxes.
The council has done this before. For 2026, the fee was also held at $181, on the recommendation of then-acting Controller Maria Brown, and that left a projected $837,876 gap between fee revenue and program costs, according to the Gazette. The fee has never gone up since it was created; the Gazette dates it to the 2019 city budget, while the Express says it was put in place in 2017.
The mayor’s problem
A decision on the fee was required before the mayor could submit his budget, and the City Charter requires that proposal by Nov. 1, the Gazette reported. The council then has until Dec. 1 to change it, subject to the mayor’s veto.
Mr. Restaino has signaled that the council’s recent decisions are complicating that work. “Obviously some of the decisions that have been made in recent meetings by the city council are impacting” the city’s budget preparations, he said in his weekly video message, as transcribed by the Niagara Express. He said budget talks would run through November, with a final budget “required by December 1.”
The same council meeting showed how tense the budget season could be. The council postponed a $544,000 change order for design services with Trautman Associates, and split 3-2 on a $30,000 payment to the Niagara Orleans Land Improvement Corporation, the county land bank, the Express reported.
Is the fee too low?
By regional standards, Niagara Falls residents pay little for trash pickup. In Clarence, where residents contract privately with haulers, the two providers charge $544.78 and $462 a year, according to the Niagara Express. The Express wrote that the Falls fee is “less than 50% of what other Western New York communities pay.”
The council’s bet is that recent surpluses can carry the gap. That may work for a year. But the contract escalator means the gap grows each year the fee stays flat, and a surplus spent on garbage can’t be spent on anything else.
Buffalo shows where that road can lead. In a May review of Buffalo’s budget, the state comptroller’s office found that Buffalo’s general fund had “historically funded annual solid waste fund operating deficits because the Common Council did not ensure user fees were sufficient.” As of March 30, Buffalo’s solid waste fund owed its general fund $27.3 million, and the proposed 2026-27 budget relied on a 25% increase in user fees to stop the bleeding.
What could help
Niagara Falls is far from that point. But the council and mayor could take a few steps now. They could publish the size of the surplus the council is counting on, and how much of it is committed for 2027. They could set a multiyear fee plan that tracks Casella’s 3% escalator in small, predictable steps rather than an occasional jump. And they could pair any future increase with relief for seniors or low-income homeowners, so residents who spoke against the fee aren’t the ones hit hardest.
The Buffalo Chronicle has asked Mr. Archie and Mr. Zajac how the council plans to cover the $1.12 million and how large the city’s surplus is. Any responses will be added to this story.
Featured photo: Niagara Falls City Hall. Photo by DanielPenfield via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped.
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