With another tax hike looming in 2027, the Kingston Common Council has dropped, for now, plans to hire an archivist to help with public records requests and perform other records management duties. At a Monday caucus meeting, the council agreed to table the request by Corporation Counsel Rebecca Mantello at least until Mayor Steve Noble presents his proposed 2027 budget later this month.

“We need to be serious about fiscal responsibility,” said Second Ward Alderman Michael Tierney of the hiring request. “And this is the opposite.”

Under New York’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), government entities must make all public records, with the exception of those specifically exempted in the law, available to the public in a timely manner. Currently, FOIL requests are handled within the relevant department with employees taking time away from their regular duties to seek out the records, redact them if necessary and get them to the person who asked for them.

In recent years, the system has grown more onerous due to FOIL requests from attorneys working on behalf of Uptown property owner Neil Bender who had been engaged in numerous legal actions against the city for years before finally settling litigation regarding the demolition of the Pike Plan canopies earlier this year. Mayor Noble and former corporation counsel Barbara Graves-Poller have described those FOIL requests, which at times forced employees to spend the majority of their working hours combing through paper records dating back to the 1950s, as a deliberate attempt to drain city resources and exhaust the city’s will to continue the legal fight.

The proposal by Mantello called for creating a new position, public records coordinator, to take charge of FOIL requests, work to get paper records digitized and implement new records management software and other duties related to tracking and archiving documents. The position would pay between $50,000 and $75,000 plus benefits that include a healthcare plan costing the city up to $45,000 annually and payments into New York State’s retirement system. Mantello said the new position would improve efficiency in all city departments by relieving employees of responsibility for fielding information requests.

“Having someone who could assist with records management, not just with respect to FOIL, would be beneficial to the city,” Mantello told the council. “Right now, no one is steering the ship and each of the departments are responding individually.”

But lawmakers, including some who voted to pass the resolution out of the Laws and Rules Committee for consideration by the full council expressed skepticism. Teryl Mickens (D-Ward 5) said with all of the litigation with Bender settled, there was no reason to believe the onslaught of public records requests would continue.

“I have a problem with the concept of spending all of this money based on a problem that presented itself as a major issue over the past few years and determining that it will stay at that level going into the future,” said Mickens.

Lawmakers also expressed reluctance to authorize any new spending at a time when the city has seen property taxes rise by nearly 20 percent since 2024. Last month, on the advice of City Comptroller John Tuey, the council voted to authorize breaking New York’s 2 percent property tax cap, singling that another significant tax hike is likely in 2027.

Increased spending driven contractual obligations, especially employee benefits and that lowering or even holding the line on the tax levy, Tuey said, would require laying off staff and cutting city services, something Noble has so far declined to do. Instead, in his 2026 budget, Noble left dozens of currently vacant positions unfilled, leaving most city departments short-staffed. Alderman Mike Ham (D-Ward 7) said that given the strain on the city’s workforce, authorizing entirely new positions would be unfair.

“How do you tell [the Department of Public Works] you’ve got to trim your budget by 10 or 15 percent but on the other hand you’re going to allocate a $100,000 job?” said Ham.

Lawmakers opted to table the hiring resolution rather than vote it down on the floor at Tuesday’s regular monthly council meeting. That means that it could be revived at a later date. Council President Andrea Shaut suggested that the council could take it up again once Noble’s proposed 2027 budget is released later this month. That, she said, would give members of the council’s finance committee some idea of the fiscal picture next year as they go through the six-week process of vetting the Mayor’s budget, questioning department heads about potential cost savings and making changes to the spending plan.

“I would like this to go through. It’s super-important for transparency purposes and to help our departments run smoother when they’re not focusing on this work,” said Shaut. “But I also recognize the costs.”