The Town of Colonie released it’s preliminary budget for 2011 that cuts the town’s total operating funds by over $1 million during at time Town Supervisor Paula Mahan said is hard for all local municipalities.
The fact that there are a lot of costs and high increases that are trickling down from the state to local governments is truly a burden on all of us, said Mahan. `Therefore, we have to do the very best we can to keep cutting expenses and try and to compensate for those high costs that we’ll have to cover during an extremely difficult economy.`
Some tentative changes laid out in the budget would be to reduce the Landfill’s budget from $7,969,042 in 2010 to $6,949,986 in 2011, cutting the Latham Water District’s budget from $12,653,633 t0 $12,217,343 and increasing funding for the Highway Department’s operating budget from $7,123,857 to $7,452,953.
Mahan said that a lot of the vacant positions withing the town, due to early retirement incentives, will be left open unless they are positions that are necessary.
`Majority of positions will not be filled at this point, unless it’s something that’s absolutely necessary, like public safely,` she said. `We have, to this point, reduced our workforce significantly and really our efforts are right sizing our government here in town by consolidating, restructuring and also through attrition and also this retirement incentive program is helping us with this as well.`
For a full run down of the town budget, check the Oct. 6 print edition of the Colonie Spotlight.“