Commissioner of Finance Ken Ivins presented what he called the most difficult and challenging comprehensive budget he’s had to draw up, at the Tuesday, Oct. 5, Saratoga Springs City Council meeting. Ivins said his objectives while drawing up a budget for 2011 were to keep taxes as low as possible while cutting the least amount of services.
Ivins proposed an 8.48 percent property tax hike, a move he said he personally felt was too high and `unacceptable,` but he said he was having problems finding a way to get it lower.
`We’re not the only ones. All over the Capital Region, as well as all over the U.S., communities are having difficult times,` said Ivins.
That increase would mean a homeowner with a home valued at $200,000 would see taxes go up $98. To get the property tax increase to 0 percent, though, would require finding more than $1.4 million to cut elsewhere and the loss of some 32 jobs, something Ivins said would `cut our ability to adequately serve the citizens of our community.`
Ivins also proposed moving some city dispatchers over to the county, saying the county already handles dispatching services like 911. That move would save about a half million dollars and also result in the hiring of two clerical positions to handle data input, an effort that would make more information more readily available to officers. Ivins also said he wanted to keep a police captain position unfunded, which would eventually be the equivalent of a patrolman being unfunded, and he wanted to leave four fire positions unfilled until grants came in.
`I guarantee that no matter what I propose, there will be someone very irate with me,` said Ivins. `This has been the toughest budget.`
Comissioner of Public Works Anthony Scirocco said while he believes Ivins put together what he felt was a good comprehensive budget, he was looking forward to the three workshops where he could get input from residents and work closer with other councilmembers to make some adjustments.
`We’re going to continue to work on our own budgets, what we actually submitted to him, to see if we can’t find some more cuts. We’re splitting hairs with budget we have, but we’ll try to work with him and the other departments to put together something a little more palattable,` said Scirocco. `We’ve had a couple tough go arounds already, the past couple years, so this is nothing new for us. We’ll weather the storm as best we can it’s a work in progress.`
Several general issues made drawing up the 2011 Comprehensive budget a challenge, said Ivins. One was that for years, the city has patched up the VLT loss with one-time money. That one-time money is now running out, Ivins said, and the city has to make some adjustments and `address this once and for all.`
He also said property tax revenues are falling short because people haven’t been paying them, given the economic times, so the city has started going after homeowners with unpaid taxes of more than two year to recoup some of them.
Ivins also said he’s waiting on sales tax numbers for a few months to come in, which would give him a better idea of how the city fairs. The final numbers won’t be in until February.
`Last year, things were looking really dire but in November and December, things shot up; but we didn’t get those final numbers in until January or February, long after we’d passed a budget and presented a tax bill to taxpayers,` said Ivins.
The council set three dates and times for public hearings to discuss the Comprehensive budget, which they have the month of November to agree upon and pass. The hearings will be Tuesday, Oct. 19, at 6:15 p.m.; Thursday, Oct. 28, at 1 p.m.; and Tuesday, Nov. 16, at 6:30 p.m.
The Town of Clifton Park released its 2011 Tentative budget, which includes a highway tax increase of 2 cents per thousand dollars of assessed value. That means if adopted, the highway tax would represent a $3 annual increase for the average homeowner. The budget does not include any layoffs and sees employees receive a 3.5 percent standard increase. The budget sits at $15.1 million and town officials said the recent trend of rising sales tax revenues is positive.
`We continue to experience private sector investment in Clifton Park and the effects of the Global Foundries project in Malta will have a positive impact on business activity and revenues,` Barrett said in a statement. `Although we expect sales tax revenues to increase year over year, budget estimates remain more than $1 million less than levels just a few years ago. Over the last 10 years, we have paid off all town debt and saved for a rainy day, which will allow the town to weather a difficult budget environment and maintain programs and services.`
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