Town officials are seeing costs outpace revenues, but Supervisor Harry Buffardi is holding his budget below the tax cap.
“Our cost increases are well above two percent,” Buffardi said, “particularly when it comes to health insurance and pension costs and other operational costs, such as fuel … are difficult to predict.”
Buffardi unveiled his proposed 2013 budget during the Town Board’s meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 26. It would increase the property tax levy by 1.9 percent and call for $21.5 million in spending, a nearly $319,000 increase compared to this year’s modified budget. Fund balance usage is reduced in the plan by around $548,000, leaving more than $615,000 of reserves being tapped for next year.
Buffardi could not provide the actual tax levy threshold for the town under the state tax cap, but he has no intentions to breach a 2 percent increase. Each 1 percent increase in the town’s budget roughly equals $100,000 in revenue. Municipalities typically can exceed a 2 percent increase after calculating the actual tax cap through the state’s formula for exclusions.
“We use 2 percent as our number,” Buffardi said. “I believe in what Cuomo said, so we took 2 percent … and we set that as our ceiling; not a glass ceiling, but a steel ceiling.”
Calls to Town Comptroller Jackie Every to clarify the town’s tax cap threshold were not returned by press time.
Buffardi’s budget contains no layoffs, but there are no salary increases either as the town prepares to enter negotiations with CSEA and the police union. Buffardi said vacant positions would not be filled.
Buffardi said town services are not diminished in his proposed spending plan.
“Realizing the financial climate that we live in today, I felt it necessary not to reduce services to our residents,” Buffardi said.
Buffardi said all department heads were asked for a minimum of 10 percent in reductions to non-personnel related budget items. Not every department met the requirement, he said.
“Then we went over, dollar by dollar, line by line, and looked for more,” Buffardi said. “We kept wringing out this sponge in an attempt to get money out of it.”
There is no money allocated for paving in the budget, he said, with the town solely relying on funding from the state DOT’s Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS).
Buffardi said he is “sure it will” provide some difficulties for town paving, but he said it is a measure to help control costs.
The police department, the town’s most expensive department, totals almost $5.5 million in the tentative budget, about $80,000 less than in this year’s modified budget.
As Buffardi tries to control costs, he also wants to the to get away from the town’s “addiction of raiding fund balances.”
Fund balance usage in the general fund falls at $300,000, with no highway reserves being tapped. Reserves from special districts would have the town using more than $315,000. In 2012, the previous administration used less than $1.17 million from all fund reserves. In 2011, fund balance usage totaled almost $1.7 million.
Earlier this year, the town comptroller and financial consultant John Paolino presented a Five Year Financial Forecast for the town covering 2013-17. The recommended fund balance usage from the general fund was only $200,000 each year, with highway reserves set at $50,000 allocated annually.
“If you look at your budgets … your budgets are not balanced, they are far from it,” Paolino said at the time. “You are balancing your budget by applying fund balance.”
There are some instances in the 2013 tentative budget where department requests are exceeded in the proposed spending plan, but the overall budget is more than $175,000 under what had been requested. The tentative budget is about $208,500 more than the comptroller’s recommendations.