For the first time in six years, the City of Glen Cove is operating at a surplus. Over the past decade, the city has operated at a deficit for eight years in total, a trend that ended at the end of the 2024 fiscal year.
“We are very pleased with where we are today,” said Mayor Pam Panzenbeck.
Controller Michael Piccirillo said he had two goals when he entered his role six years ago: to get the city out of its deficit and to raise its Moody’s Credit Rating score.
Now, he has accomplished his goal, with the city’s operating surplus at almost $88,000 and a Moody’s score of Baa1, the highest it’s been in over two decades.
“Now what’s the goal? To maintain that,” he said.
Piccirillo said the last time the city was in an operating surplus was in 2017, when it sold the waterfront to RXR.
He said money was spent “aggressively” within the city, and “that surplus diminished within two years.” He said that when he entered his role, the city was operating at a $5.4 million deficit.
When Piccirillo first entered his role, he said he had changed ” improper ” budgeting practices and began “aggressively managing expenses.” He said he “immersed himself” in each department to understand their spending habits and evaluate how much to budget.
“I found that there were quite a few things that the city was spending on that were non-essential,” he said.
Over the past four years, the city has been operating at an annual surplus, which has brought the overall deficit down until the end of the 2024 fiscal year, when the operating balance became a surplus.
Panzenbeck said that while the annual budget offers a plan for expenses, things need to be re-evaluated throughout the year if revenue streams do not come in as planned.
Piccirllo said that closely managing the budget helps determine how to prioritize spending, especially when emergency expenses arise.
Piccirillo said the city’s Moody’s Credit Rating outlook was upgraded from Baa2 negative to Baa2 stable in 2022, then from Baa2 stable to Baa2 positive in 2023. In 2024, he said the city earned a Baa1 credit rating, the highest it had been in over 20 years.
“That’s the independent source,” he said.
This year, Piccirillo said the city has maintained that rating and hopes to advance it further next year. He said the state has also upgraded the city’s “fiscal stress” score.
“Those upgrades mean a lot to me. It just means that we’re doing the right thing for all these people who pay taxes,” Panzenbeck said.
Over her past four years in office, Panzenbeck has raised taxes once, with a 1.98% increase in the 2025 budget. Piccirillo noted that the increase averages approximately 0.50% over four years.
“That’s our goal: to try to do very well for the residents of Glen Cove without raising taxes,” Panzenbeck said.
In addition to not raising taxes, Panzenbeck said she set out to improve services and facilities.
“We’ve been successful in that,” she said.
Panzenbeck said Glen Cove’s parks, beaches, and recreational spaces have been renovated. She has also invested in new equipment for the city’s sanitation, water district, and first responders.
She said the next step is to create reserves.
“All these other townships have reserves. They have millions of dollars in reserves. We don’t have that,” Panzenbeck said.
Panzenbeck said the city continues to look for recurring revenue streams that will continue to aid the city’s finances, and Piccirillo said the city looks to maximize existing revenue streams.
He said the city brought its fees, ranging from filming to building and golfing fees, up to market value, which added hundreds of thousands of dollars to its revenue stream.
At the Tuesday, July 22, city council meeting, the board passed a resolution to preempt the city’s sales tax. The resolution will allow the city to retrieve half of its sales tax, which is shared with Nassau County, but will remove the current county property tax rebate given to homeowners.
“This sales tax revenue is to help improve the city’s financials by building reserves,” Piccirillo said.
He said the sales tax money can be used to offset recurring operating expenses and stabilize or reduce city taxes.
Panzenbeck and Piccirillo said they aim to continue to improve the city’s finances while building reserves.
