Library makes its impact on budget, public hearing tonight

NORTH EAST — The Town Board discussed the preliminary budget for 2008 at its workshop meeting last Thursday evening. There will be a public hearing on the that document tonight, Thursday, Nov. 8, at 8 p.m. at Town Hall.

Town Supervisor Dave Sherman drafted the fiscal plan, and has been tweaking it, with the board’s support, throughout their review of the budget.

"We did a lot of work to change the numbers down," Sherman said last week.

The supervisor has been busy, presenting two versions of the budget since he first unveiled his fiscal plan. There’s one standard version with the library’s annual budget at $34,000 (which is at an increase of little more than 3 percent over this year’s budget line of $33,000). Then there’s the alternative budget copy, with the library’s annual budget at $125,000. That was subject to the passage of the library referendum, which voters supported at the polls during Tuesday’s elections.

The town’s budget figure, therefore, is now at $1,477,860, that’s including the passage of the library referendum.

"In each of these budgets we did a comparison of rates and taxes," Sherman said before giving details regarding the preliminary budget (without the passage of the library referendum). "The percentage of increase in the tax rate outside the village is 5.35 percent, as we can best project. But we don’t set tax rates, we set levies."

The percentage of change inside the village is visible through a 5.89-percent increase to the tax rate (without the referendum passing).

The passage of the library referendum leads to a whole different set of numbers. The alternative budget shows a town tax outside the village as having a 13.01-percent increase. The tax rate inside the village, meanwhile, increased by 28.02 percent.

"The difference between having the library and no library at $150,000 taxable value is about $30," Sherman said. "The library is about 20 cents per thousand."

The passage of the library referendum means the town will continually have to budget $125,000 annually to the library, without question. This will remain the case until another referendum is passed by the voters.