The tentative 2025 Saratoga County budget includes a property tax decrease.
Saratoga County is one the fastest-growing regions in the state, and the county budget property tax rate is set to go down by 5% next year to $1.87 per $1,000 of assessed value.
This is the fourth consecutive year where the county has held or decreased the rate, coming down from $2.23 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2022.
County Administrator Steve Bulger says the $432 million spending plan comes as assessed property values in the county continue to rise.
“A big part of the property tax rate calculation is how much the expenditures are going to be spread out over the entire assessed valuation of the county, and over the last two years, we have gone from a total valuation of $32 billion to $40 billion that's a 25% increase in only two years,” said Bulger.
Republican Saratoga Springs supervisor Matt Veitch says even with growing revenues, the board was careful to remain conservative.
“At the end of the day we’re kind of just keeping the status quo as we go forward, not getting too ahead of ourselves. The last few years had a lot of revenue coming in from the federal government and that’s not there anymore. The COVID relief programs are all over, so from there we have to kind of look at the way we had been budgeting before COVID which is to really tighten our belts and keeping costs low,” said Veitch.
The Belmont Stakes is returning to Saratoga Race Course next June while its regular downstate home undergoes renovations, and the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary war in 2027 is expected to draw heritage tourists from around the world.
Bulger, also the president of the Campaign for Saratoga 250, says it’s important that the county keep up its investments into key events.
“The revenue we use for that is from our occupancy tax. That is our occupancy tax revenues, or hotel tax, if you want to call it, that is really what we use for our Economic Development and Tourism Promotion. So we have taken some of that occupancy tax revenue and dedicated it to those two areas, because we know it's an investment that will just return more people coming, more tourists coming, more visitors coming to the county,” said Bulger.
The 2025 budget is set to invest $405,000 into 250th efforts.
In June, the county agreed on a new five-year contract with the local Civil Service Employees Association unit. In 2025, the county is set to spend upwards of an additional $6.8 million for employee benefits, and county employees are receiving a 2.95% raise.
Bulger says updated labor contracts are key to the continued growth and success of the county.
“People want to come here and work so we can deliver to services that are necessary. So taken together, yeah, we're pleased with our labor agreements. It is adding additional cost, but we know these are investments we have to make. We have to take care of our county workforce,” said Bulger.
The county’s Deputy Sheriff’s PBA reached a new five-year contract in 2023, which saw a long-awaited 20-year retirement benefit at the cost of receiving no wage increases for the first two years. The union has been calling for a new contract, citing a number of losses to nearby departments due to non-competitive wages.
Bulger says state and federal mandates including an Early Intervention Program for families with young children with disabilities, Medicaid, and a seasonal homeless shelter account for $80 million of the budget, falling to the county.
“The unfunded mandates from both state and federal are growing next year are going to be up 13% yet we only have a 2% property tax cap that we have to fit in, and our sales tax revenues have been down as I mentioned, so we have to really figure it out how we're going to meet the state and federal mandates while also not breaking the property tax cap. And it's a challenge,” said Bulger.
The county’s projected sales tax revenue for 2025 is $170 million.
