Since the rise of the moral majority back in the 1980s, it’s been a popular bromide that a budget stands as a moral document because it tells us mathematically what its author prioritizes. On Tuesday, October 3, nine months into the job, Ulster County executive Jen Metzger traveled to Marlborough, a southernmost township in the county “where the landscapes are sprinkled with apple orchards” to share her vision of how the taxpayer money should be spent in the coming year.
At the lectern, every speaker acknowledged their north-south county affiliations. When legislative chair Tracey Bartels spoke, she did so as a proud south-county native hailing from Gardiner. County executive Metzger called herself a northerner from Rosendale.
The choice of a southernmost township as the location for this year’s budget presentation accentuated the executive’s push to present to a widely scattered county electorate the picture of a more responsive administration. In February she had taken her state-of-the-county speech to Ellenville.
Legislative minority leader Ken Ronk has in the past expressed that — judging by the level of resources previously dedicated to the townships south of the State Route 299 — many Ulster County residents must believe the county starts north of the highway.
Over 61,000 county residents reside below Ronk’s rhetorical borderline. A third of the county population resides in Lloyd, Marlborough, Gardiner, Plattekill, Shawangunk and Wawarsing.
“It is our season to shine, so welcome all,” spoke host legislator Gina Hansut.
Big fund balances
“We are in a very strong financial position as a county going into 2024,” said Metzger, who noted that the fund balance for the county is anticipated to exceed $110 million.
Just ten days previously, county comptroller March Gallagher had communicated that her office had been “unable to provide a comprehensive overview of the county’s financial position.”
“Our inability to record transactions in a timely way is a major concern,” said Gallagher. “Without transparency on the financial condition of the county, policy makers are going into the budget season without all necessary information.”
Compared to the same period in 2022, the comptroller warned, county revenue collections had decreased by $9.7 million at the close of the second quarter of 2023.
The numbers the county executive used were provided by external auditors PKF O’Connor Davies who had estimated the total balance in the general fund at $135 million for the year ending in 2022, including an unrestricted fund balance of over $110 million.
Metzger said she had decided on “an extremely cautious approach” in her projections, reserving 20 percent of operating expenditures, the maximum permitted by county policy, in a rainy-day fund.
Some $413.1 million is proposed to be spent in 2024, up eight percent from the beginning of this year, Metzger said that less than 1.4 percent represented an increase in discretionary spending.
The county is faced with a $17-million increase in mandated and contractual spending.
The cost to the county for providing Medicaid, for instance, has jumped $4.2 million in the new budget because, as Metzger noted, “New York State opted to no longer share the enhanced Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (eFMAP) provided under the Affordable Care Act.”
In addition, the 2024 budget creates an $18-million capital reserve fund for the county emergency operations center to be built in old apple orchard in New Paltz.
The housing crisis
Addressing an audience of about 100, Metzger presented budget priorities on the topics of housing, climate, infrastructure, transit, broadband access, restorative justice, health, sustainable tourism and economic development.
“Fully 41 percent of households in our county are severely cost-burdened,” said Metzger, “spending more than half their income on housing. People are losing their homes, and can’t find affordable alternatives. Families in emergency housing stay in these temporary accommodations for an average of 19 months. That is nearly twice as long as two years ago.”
Metzger plans a dedicated Housing and Homelessness Unit to begin operating within the Department of Social Services at a cost of $1.2 million. The unit will be led by a special assistant to the commissioner, a housing specialist, and an emergency housing resource coordinator. Its mission will be to oversee and manage the navigation of the process of identifying individual needs, to locate appropriate temporary emergency housing, and to ensure the health and safety of these unlucky travelers throughout the process.
Presently the county utilizes near 20 hotels and motels, a number which fluctuates, for temporary emergency housing. In the general absence of regulation in the Hudson Valley housing market, the causes of the downward pressure on those struggling to rise are no mystery. A report titled “Out of Reach” from Pattern for Progress (PFP) earlier this year stated the problem. “Wage stagnation in our lower-income brackets paired with skyrocketing housing and living costs have created an affordability crisis with devastating consequences for our hardworking neighbors and our entire region,” it said.
Apartments rented as hotel rooms are a significant driver of the long-term housing-stock shortage. Multiple municipalities in the county have embraced caps on the number of short-term rentals allowed within their boundaries.
To aid enforcement, Metzger intends to increase data-sharing from the county level.
The company Host Compliance, a subsidiary of Granicus, currently monitors online short-term rental activity for the county. “We plan to expand our current contract with Granicus to conduct automated enforcement of occupancy-tax collection across dozens of platforms and provide more robust data overall,” explained Metzger. The county does not maintain its own registry of AirBnbs. The service monitors itself and submits occupancy-tax revenues based on its own internal numbers.
Metzger said she’d be happy to consider maintaining a publicly reviewable short-term rental registry to ensure compliance across all short-term rental services.
Earlier this year, New York State doubled the allowable rates for the hotel-occupancy tax to four percent, and Ulster County adopted the new maximum rate.
Metzger’s budget provides that a quarter of the hotel-occupancy tax proceeds, or around $1.5 million annually, will be dedicated to replenishing the newly created Housing Action Fund already seeded with
$15 million from the county fund balance. Of the remaining three-quarters of proceeds from the hotel occupancy tax, 40 percent will go into the general fund, ten percent to tourism, as required state law, and the remaining 25 percent to sustaining a robust public bus system.
“[A million and a half] will be used for UCAT,” says Metzger, “in both expanding routes and drivers as well as improving public communication about bus routes, modernizing the fleet, and other necessary investments to make UCAT the best possible transit system it can be.”
The county anticipates purchasing four electric cutaways in 2024, “For the first time, battery-electric cutaway buses will be commercially available for us to purchase that also qualify for [STOA] funding,” said Metzger. “In a large, rural county, we need a mix of bus sizes, and many routes can be served by the smaller cutaways. We currently have nine diesel and gas cutaways in the fleet.”
Metzger pledged to make the investments necessary “to make UCAT the best possible transit system it can be.”
Other county priorities
Discussions of service expansion among public transportation lends unavoidably to discussions of the roads and bridges upon which the public transportation will have to travel. Twenty million dollars in the new budget has been allocated to improving aimed squarely at road and bridge infrastructure. The Wolven Bridge in the Town of Kingston, the Galeville Bridge in the Town of Shawangunk, and the Fantinekill Bridge in the Town of Rochester are on the executive’s list for improvements.
“As we assess, repair, and replace our bridges and culverts, we’re preparing for the impacts of climate change,” said Metzger. “Ulster County is particularly vulnerable to floods. Past 100-year events now occur roughly every 20 years, and we have to build our infrastructure and capacity accordingly.”
A $100,000 county grant will award funding amounts from $1000 to $7000 to encourage municipalities to enhance wireless broadband availability in public spaces, parks, libraries, and town halls.
Some $500,000 is budgeted for jail food and medical contracts. An early intervention program will be funded at $1.8 million. Some $1.3 mil in opioid settlement funds will be used to create the region’s first outpatient detox program. A $2.5-million grant program will support municipal solar and electric vehicle charging.
The county executive singled out tourism as “the number-one economic activity in the county,” holding up the arts community as its beating heart.
Metzger’s budget provided a morally revealing buffet with a variety of plates served salted with the assurance that property taxes should once again not increase.
There in the south of the county, it was her first statement of the day to receive sustained applause.
Join the family! 
