To keep the 2021 New Paltz town budget within this year’s 1.56 percent tax cap, employees would have to be laid off. That’s the expectation of Neil Bettez, the town supervisor, who estimates that $300,000 will have to be cut from the tentative budget to hit that mark. Guarding against that prospect, the town board set a public hearing on October 15 on a law to exceed the cap.
This budget includes cost increases for pensions and health insurance. Some $750,000 less in revenue is expected next year than was projected for this year, a gap that can’t be made up by dipping into the fund balance — the money left over after expenses are paid. That well is pretty much dry.
Bettez said that the tentative budget had showed a 3.1 percent increase without increases in pension costs. With that additional $160,000, there’d have to be a 4.3 percent increase to the tax levy. “I was pretty disappointed about that,” Bettez said.
Other cuts have been decided upon. The next planning-board secretary will only work half-time, and the court clerks that have left won’t be replaced.
The justice court is a large part of what’s missing on the revenue side. Town officials were expecting $350,000 as the town share of fines collected through the justice court, but there’s been a very big dropoff (in April, just $10 came in). It’s evident that the pandemic has played a large part. Bettez said it wasn’t immediately clear what role bail reform may have had, as that law had not been in effect very long when the last budget was passed.
State aid for this year has been cut across the board by 20 percent, which means $161,000 in highway-paving funds won’t be available. Bettez said that the ten percent that sales-tax revenues have dropped will cost New Paltz $230,000. The supervisor expects the numbers to get worse if the pandemic resurges in New York.
What would it take to cut the remaining $300,000 to get under the tax cap? “We would have to look at layoffs,” replied Bettez. “We’ve cut things that will have to be put back when things get better.”
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