A public hearing on the Town of Saugerties budget for 2021 was held in the dual online and live format the town recently adopted. The format allows for residents to attend meetings in person, but the meeting is also available online through Cisco Go to Meeting.
Town supervisor Fred Costello answered critics who say that other towns in the area were able to hold taxes level. These towns used fund balances, he said, money left over from prior years’ budgets to offset budget increases. “In Saugerties, we are in the process of improving our fund balance at this moment,” Costello said, “and we are making significant strides in doing that. But I don’t feel confident in the fund balance that exists to use any of that to offset taxes.”
The budget for 2021 totals $13.3 million. Village residents pay for some services, such as street maintenance, through separate village taxes.
The amount to be raised by taxes totals $10,660,625, of which $7,147,139 is town wide, including the village, $423,956 is for services to the town outside the village, and $3,089,530 is budgeted for the highway fund. This is an increase of $96,812, or just under 1 percent, from the 2020 tax levy.
The budget contains a salary for the supervisor of $40,500, an increase of $1000 or 2.52 percent, and for the four members of the town board of $47,000 [$11,750 each], an increase of 2.17 percent over the current $46,000.
Too big a cushion?
“Since 2017 [the town has budgeted] $134,000 in revenue over expenditures for the highway department,” said Michelle Numssen. “There must be opportunities for trimming of line items that have used much less than approved. Why not reduce these line items that are used much less than approved?”
If these budget items are inflated to build up the fund balance, “I’m going to call that out as a shell game,” Numssen continued. She offered some examples. The budget includes $23,925 for miscellaneous items in the maintenance of roads section, but expenditures in 2017 were $4470; in 2018 they were $12,384 and in 2019 they were $6050. The 2020 budget allocates $22,000, of which $5854 has been spent so far. That $23,925 should be reduced to the $10,000 that existed previously, Numssen mainained.
Numssen found a $10,000 item for computer hardware. Just over $10,000 was allocated for computer hardware in this year’s budget. What was the need for the same amount again next year? Similarly, what would have caused the amount needed for uniforms to have increased from just over $7000 spent this year to $19,000 in next year’s budget? This year, the budget for uniforms is also $19,000, of which $7021 has been spent.
While she focused on the highway fund, Nummsen claimed similar savings should be possible throughout the budget. “The highway department has asked for $105,000 for fuel yearly,” she said; The budget shows $26,563 had been spent as of July of this year. “The Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, has forecast [fuel costs] will remain low for 2021,” she said. She suggested that the allocation for fuel for the highway department equipment should be $80,000, which would cover expenses greater than in previous years. The highway department has allocations for fuel in addition to the $105,000 in the equipment category.
Wrong time for raises?
Jay Carr said he did not have a lot of time to study the budget, but one thing that caught his attention was the fact that employees and board members received salary increases.
“At a time when people have lost their jobs, or are worried about losing their jobs, or have had their hours cut back because of the Covid lockdown, how with any kind of fair conscience can you decide to give yourselves raises when the people who will be paying for those raises are either without income or worried that their income is going to dry up?” he asked.
More for energy savings?
Mary O’Donnell, coordinator for the Climate Smart Task Force and chair of the Conservation Advisory Commission, said she noticed that there was no allocation for the Conservation Advisory Council. “I would like to point out two things,” she said. “Number one, the $2000 that was allocated in the prior year was not Saugerties taxpayer dollars; that money came to the Conservation Advisory Council and the Climate Smart Task Force as a part of a grant because Saugerties – we’re very proud – became a clean energy community and received $5000 in a state grant.”
Half of that was given to the Conservation Advisory Commission, she said. “So my suggestion is that the $2000 that is left in the budget from 2020 be allocated for 2021. As you can understand, the projects we were going to work on in 2020, given Covid – we did meet every month via Zoom – so we continued to work, but we were not able to do the kind of outreach and the kind of programs that we had hoped to do. That money is important to leave in the budget. It does not come from Saugerties taxpayers, it was a state grant.”
There was some difficulty for people present at the Senior Center to hear comments from people online, People who were attending via Cisco had difficulty hearing the people who were present in the Senior Center. Costello said the town is working on an upgrade of its communications system that should make it easier for people listening online to hear what is happening at the center and improve services all around.
Costello said the board will consider O’Donnell’s request, and he thanked her for the hard work she and her fellow committee members do for the community. The climate smart designation and the conservation work that has been done is paying dividends through reduced energy costs, “and will continue to pay dividends into the future,” Costello said.
Councilman Mike Ivino has worked with the highway department and the police department to find ways to save fuel, and “we are experiencing savings that we were able to memorialize into this year’s budget, Costello said.
The town has contracted with the operators of a solar farm that was recently installed on the town landfill Costello said. “Through an energy credit purchase program we can buy energy at market rate and receive a 10 percent discount from our vendor for the use of that credit,” he said.
The town has converted its street lighting to sodium vapor and LED lights and expects to save as much has two-thirds on the energy costs to operate them. The expected payback on the $50,000 investment should begin to show up in the street lighting budget within two to two and a half years from the installation – and the lights were installed a year ago.
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