North East wrestles with budget

NORTH EAST — The public hearing on the town’s preliminary budget was short-lived, as nobody from the community attended (save for the town’s highway superintendent, Robert Stevens, a presence at every Town Board meeting, and Councilman-elect Steven Merwin, in attendance to catch up with town matters before taking the oath of office in January).

As town Supervisor Dave Sherman put it, he likes "keeping people abreast on what the numbers are."

According to him, the town brought in about $100,000 in sales tax; it did not fare as well with mortgage tax. It is anticipated that the town will receive $63,977 in mortgage tax, creating a shortfall of $36,023 compared to the $100,000 it expected.

"There’s not much you can play around with at all," Sherman said. "I would like to try to address that. First I wanted to give you the revenue side.

"Regarding the budget we made changes to the village recreation and community center," he added.

"We wanted to keep some money for capital projects and keep the numbers down a bit to keep the tax rates down," said Councilman Dan Briggs.

Sherman agreed, and reminded the board that the general town inside the village is different from the town outside the village. He said whether including the village or not, the main goal was to keep the tax rate from climbing over last year’s.

"We’re trying to hold the levels of tax rate from 2009," he said. "That was our aim to do whatever we could do."

To meet that goal Sherman said he wound up using funds from the A fund (the entire town) and bridging a gap, from $37,000 to $49,5000, to bring down the tax rate to a 0 percent difference. He also made a point of mentioning one detail.

"We don’t set the tax rates. We send the levy amounts to the county," Sherman said. "We have the best information from the county — they send back the number that implies the tax rate, which is higher or lower from the last budget year and we try to get it down to a zero amount."

To get there the supervisor, whose job it is to draft the budget, had to draw from the B fund (outside of village) and increase the amount of money transferred to the DB fund (highway outside of village). That allowed the amount to be raised by taxes and the DB fund to be reduced. It also allowed for a jump from $75,000 to $104,245 in the highway budget line from the tentative budget to the preliminary budget.

"The more the fund balance is drawn to the DB fund, that reduces the amount of tax to be raised by taxes," Sherman explained. "The amount of taxable assessed value may rise or it may fall a little bit.... It jiggers up and down a little bit. Usually it affects somebody’s taxes by pennies."

With that the public hearing was closed. Briggs thanked the supervisor for his "obvious effort" in drafting the fiscal plan. Sherman responded by stating his concerns.

"Well, we’re drawing on our rainy day funds," he said. "The biggest gap to fill is the mortgage tax because it dropped off and is about one-third of what it’s been, and we’re not projecting much more than that. What I did want to talk to you about, of course, with the mortgage tax $36,023 less than what we had budgeted, is that we’ll wind up drawing it ... from the fund balance."

The good news, however, is that a longtime lawsuit with the Azon Corporation over the landfill was settled recently. It deposited a settlement of $193,653 into the town’s lap; that’s money the supervisor said the town could draw from to start paying for debt services.

As far as salary increases, the Town Board agreed on a 1 percent increase to all of its employees and elected officials across the board, with the exception of the tax assessor. The assessor’s salary, which has been stepped up from $20,000 in 2008 to $22,500 in 2009 is to increase to $25,000 in 2010, as was previously approved.

Through all of the efforts of the supervisor, along with help from his board, the percentage of change of this year’s budget from last year’s is quite small. A comparison of the 2009 tax rate to the implied 2010 tax rate outside the village amounts to a change of -.003 percent. That same comparison inside the village, for the general fund, amounts to a change of -.008 percent.

"Tax rate wise we’re keeping it flat — there’s no change," Sherman said. "The difficulty, of course, is that you’re drawing from the fund balance and this is not something you can do year from year. Also, certain unforeseen things may come along during the year and there may be things you have to deal with, that’s why you have the fund balance. You do not want to be in a situation where you’re at the end of the year and down to the last nickel. That’s not an appropriate way to run a government."

The final budget number — the amount to be raised through taxes — totalled $1,646,624 in the preliminary budget.

The board will continue its budget discussion at its business meeting Thursday, Nov. 12, for which Sherman planned to prepare a fresh draft of the budget (with slight adjustments based on the Nov. 5 public hearing). That meeting begins at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.