The Westchester Brief | 06.17.26: Yonkers' 4.75% Tax Hike

Yonkers calls itself "Hollywood on the Hudson," but the city's new $1.64 billion budget still raised the combined property tax rate 4.75%. On May 29 the City Council unanimously adopted the largest budget in Yonkers history, trimming Mayor Mike Spano's proposed 5.25% increase but preserving all services and its workforce with help from $55 million in state aid. We explain why a development boom hasn't eased the homeowner's bill — and why the timing, days before the June 23 primary, matters.

In This Episode:
(0:00) "Hollywood on the Hudson," and a tax bill that went up anyway
(0:25) The data: a $1.64B budget, a 4.75% rate increase, $55M in state aid, and the growth-versus-tax-base question
(4:15) Quick hit: the World Cup arrives at MetLife
(5:00) Close

Sources: Yonkers Times ("City of Yonkers Adopts 2026-27 Budget; Tax Increase Reduced to 4.75%"); Westfair (Spano FY2026–27 executive budget); News 12 Westchester (state aid and council vote).

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Tags: Westchester County, I Live Here Westchester, local news, Yonkers, property taxes, city budget, Mike Spano

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Yonker spent this spring branding itself Hollywood on the Hudson. New studios, new towers, a development boom, the mayor talks up at every ribbon cutting. Then the city adopted its budget, and your taxes went up almost 5% anyway. If growth is supposed to pay for itself, why is the bill still rising? This is the Westchester Brief. I'm Jim. Let's get into it. On May 29th, the Yonkers City Council unanimously adopted the city's budget for the 2026 to 2027 fiscal year. The total is $1.64 billion, covering both city government and the Yonkers public schools. It is the largest budget in the city's history, and it carries a combined city and school property tax rate increase of 4.3 quarters percent. That number is worth sitting with because it started higher. Mayor Mike Spano's original proposal called for a 5.25% increase, an average of about $550 more per homeowner. Weeks of council hearings trimmed it to four and three quarters. So the bill came down slightly from the proposal, but it still went up, and it went up in the city. That has been the loudest about its economic momentum. Here is the tension. Yonkers is the largest city in Westchester and the fourth largest in New York State. It is also the center of the county's development wave, transit-oriented towers near the Metro North Station, the film and production push, hundreds of new housing units in the pipeline, the promise of all that growth is a wider tax base, more property on the rolls, more revenue, less pressure on the individual homeowner. Yet this budget raised the rate anyway. The reasons are the same ones squeezing every municipality right now. Rising personnel and pension costs, health care, and the price of services that climb faster than revenue. The city leaned on roughly $55 million in state aid to hold the line where it did, and it preserved all city services and its full workforce, with no layoffs. That is the trade the council made. Protect services and staffing, except a near 5% increase. Why this matters beyond Yonkers? The city is a preview of the math facing the whole county. Even where new development is genuinely arriving, the revenue it generates is not yet outrunning the cost of running a city. For a Yonkers homeowner, the practical question is what four and three quarters percent means on your specific assessment, and whether the development you keep hearing about shows up as relief on a future bill, or whether this is the new baseline, and the timing is pointed. This budget was adopted days before the June 23rd primary, in which two Yonkers area seats on the County Board of Legislators are on the ballot, and development and affordability are the central arguments. Voters in those districts are deciding who represents them in the same week. They are absorbing a higher city tax bill. Watch whether the candidates connect those two facts, because they are connected. Here is what else is happening across Westchester this week. The World Cup has arrived in the region. MetLife Stadium, just across the line in New Jersey, is hosting eight matches between now and the final on July nineteenth, and the official FIFA Fan Festival is running at Liberty State Park through the tournament. Organizers project billions in economic impact and more than a million visitors across the New York and New Jersey area. We will dig into what Westchester's actual slice of that looks like on Friday. That is the brief for today. For the full breakdown of the Yonkers budget and what it means for your bill, subscribe to our newsletter at ILiveHearWestchester.com. Oh I'm Jim, and I live here. I'll see you tomorrow.