The Saugerties Town Board is currently reviewing a $16.83 million spending plan for 2025, which reflects a $1.4 million increase, or 9.08 percent, over the previous year. At a public hearing last week, town officials stressed that further adjustments are likely before the tentative budget moves into draft territory.
“We have experienced an extraordinary amount of inflation in the last couple of years,” said supervisor Fred Costello during the public hearing, held prior to a town board meeting on Wednesday, November 6. “The increases in health care alone push us pretty close to the tax cap limit.”
In the tentative budget, the town’s property tax levy would approach $12.99 million, a 13.33 percent increase of $1.53 million. A public hearing on possibly exceeding the two percent tax cap was also held, with one speaker, Brandon Schiller, strongly against the idea.
“I just would like to voice my opposition for exceeding the two percent tax cap,” Schiller said. “I’d also like, since it’s no one else here, to express my opposition to any budget that would increase our taxes.”
Costello said he understood.
“I will say the sentiment that was just shared is consistent with the feelings of five of us (on the town board) who have responsibility to fund the government for next year,” he said, adding that it could be difficult to manage.
“We’ve had to make adjustments in our employees’ pay,” Costello said. “Folks here deserve about a week’s competitive to what they would be receiving if they work someplace else. And our general liability insurance has also increased quite dramatically. And with the increase in cost of salary, it comes in increases in payroll taxes, our workers’ comp, and all those other things that any other functioning enterprise experiences as well.”
Salary adjustments for elected officials in the proposed budget include a $2,000 (3.96 percent) increase for the supervisor, raising Costello’s salary to $52,500; a $500 (3.57 percent) boost for each of the four town board members for an annual total of $14,500 each; a $3,000 (5.26 percent) raise for the town clerk, bringing their salary to $60,000; a $3,000 (5.69 percent) increase for the tax collector, up to $55,758; a $3,000 (7.98 percent) raise for each of the two town justices, bringing their salaries to $40,598; and a $3,000 (4.02 percent) increase for the highway superintendent, their salary rising to $77,626.
Other significant budget increases include:
• Police: $3.59 million (up 6.7 percent, or $225,216)
• Highway maintenance: $2.21 million (up 5.1 percent, or $107,131)
• Medical insurance: $1.76 million (up 1.11 percent, or $190,217)
• Workers’ compensation: $163,606 (up 4.49 percent, or $7,027)
• Retirement: $1.36 million (up 8.79 percent, or $109,547)
• Parks: $1.32 million (up 7.68 percent, or $94,242)
• Social Security: $620,316 (up 6.56 percent, or $38,178)
• Safety inspections: $516,290 (up 4.04 percent, or $20,042)
• Solid waste disposal: $438,447 (up 13.52 percent, or $52,222)
• Snow removal: $307,556 (up 1.62 percent, or $4,906)
• Bond payments: $268,922 (up 162.36 percent, or $166,422)
• Animal control: $193,345 (up 17.82 percent, or $29,240)
“Every year has its own story about why there’s pressure to increase the revenue it takes to support this effort, and this year is no different,” Costello said. But 2025 is something of a perfect storm.
“One thing I think sets this year apart from others is we’re not trying to deal with one measure (showing an increase),” said Costello. “It’s multi-pronged, kind of hitting different components of almost the entire budget.”
Hence the struggle, which again Costello emphasized will continue before the spending plan is finalized.
“We’ve been wrestling it around a little bit,” he said. “The number (in the tentative budget), it will not survive. But I was more confident in years past saying we’re not going to exceed the cap. We’re going to do our best. And we’ll see the next week or so how that looks.”
Councilwoman Leeanne Thornton said Saugerties is not the only municipality in the area struggling to put their budget together.
“Saugerties is not unique,” Thornton said. “It looks like almost every (local) town and the City of Kingston are all in the same boat. It’s like the cost of operating and maintaining services is going up, and the tax cap is here, and looking at the funding of what it’s going to cost to maintain is higher than the tax cap. And I think it’s not just Saugerties that’s dealing with this, it’s many, many communities in the Hudson Valley and New York state in general.”
Costello noted that the Town of Saugerties has a long track record of avoiding surpassing the tax cap, and he’s not eager to break the streak.
“Since 2001, we were able to put a budget together that was within the cap every year,” he said. “We hope we can do that for 2025 as well. The challenges that we’re experiencing this year are not unique to Saugerties…We have talked to a lot of peers in other communities who are suffering the same consequence. We’re going to just keep working on it as ideally we prepare to adopt a budget at one of our next two meetings.
The Saugerties town board meets again on Wednesday, November 20 and Wednesday, December 11.
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