We’ve all heard the old joke: “Why do you keep hitting yourself in the head?” “Because it feels so good when I stop.” That maxim holds true for town budgets as well: Coming to the end of nearly a decade’s worth of unprecedented expenditures for infrastructure repairs in the wake of 2011’s Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee means a payoff of sorts for municipal leaders in Rosendale – just in time to help cope with Covid-19.
At a time when many New York municipalities are having to exceed their state-mandated tax caps significantly to compensate for the loss of revenues triggered by the pandemic, last week the Rosendale Town Board passed a completely flat budget for 2021, taxwise. The amount to be raised in property taxes for the $4,529,336 total town budget is $3,015,213: exactly the same as for 2020.
Only $6014 of the appropriation was made up of unexpended 2020 funds. Mortgage-tax revenues are anticipated to be up $58,000, and building permit fees up $10,000 in 2021, according to town supervisor Jeanne Walsh. That will more than make up for a sharp dip in fines from the justice court.
The town pool needs $10,000 worth of repairs to cracks, and $15,000 have been allocated to improvements to the playground and outdoor sports facilities at the Rec Center. Severe cuts to the summer camp-program budget will help cushion the blow.
While some of the major savings come from austerity measures at the highway department, much of what’s saving Rosendale from the same fiscal nightmares that other towns are facing this year derives from the completion of substantial infrastructure work, with the exception of $13,500 in unanticipated updates to water purification procedures, triggered by recent changes in state effluent discharge regulations. The town will pay about $30,000 less this year in debt service across all departments.
Through all of Rosendale’s costly trials and tribulations in fixing storm-damaged water mains, roads, tanks, pump stations and treatment facilities over the past decade, the universally acknowledged Most Valuable Player has been Terry Johnson, who served as superintendent of both the water and sewer departments and thus commanded the town’s highest salary. Johnson worked for the town for 38 years and has been ready for retirement for quite a while, but Walsh managed to talk him into staying on long enough to orchestrate the highly complex infrastructure repair program.
When he finally stepped down in January 2020, no candidate with Johnson’s rare combination of experience could be found. So, the town immediately rehired him part-time as “superintendent of special projects,” retaining his expertise as the engineering firm Environmental Consultants, LLC, was engaged to oversee operations of both departments.
Now another half-time salary line has been created for 2021 to run the sewer department, Walsh says: “We tried for six months with no new person. It wasn’t working.” Still, the town will be spending about $85,000 less for water and sewer administration in 2021.
As the infrastructure rebuilding projects, paid for mostly by state grants, wind down, no new major borrowing commitments are anticipated in the foreseeable future. It’s a good year for a town to be able to coast a little.
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