Essex County’s tentative budget was released Monday for review by the Board of Supervisors. The county manager presented a spending plan with an 8 percent tax levy, well over the New York state cap of .73 percent.
The Board of Supervisors had already passed a local law that would allow the 2016 budget to exceed the tax cap, set by the state comptroller earlier this year at 0.73 percent for entities that operate on a calendar-based fiscal year.
The projected 8 percent tax levy in the Essex County budget plan is part of a five-year scenario that brings the county to balanced budgets. County Manager Dan Palmer says they are exactly on track. “What happens in this five year plan is that we’re using two million in fund balance and we’re essentially preserving around six million or so in fund balance. We have to preserve a certain amount of fund balance and we pretty much over the last three or four years really cut the county budget pretty severely. When we started this process back in 2012 we had 690 county employees. We’re down to 490 county employees now. And we pretty much have held every budget line that we can as low as we can. So at this point I think we’re on track to get back to a balanced budget in a couple of years.”
Town of Moriah Supervisor and Finance Committee Chair Tom Scozzafava says the impact of the 2016 county budget on a $100,000 home will be about $22. “Nobody wants to see a tax increase. It’s just this plan that Dan has put together, and I support, painful as it’s been you’re going to be back on track and at that point you should see the county meeting the cap with no problems whatsoever.”
Board of Supervisors Vice-Chair and Wilmington Supervisor Randy Preston chairs the Ways and Means Committee. He doesn’t agree with the 8 percent levy even though he was expecting it. “The .73 tax cap this year is somewhat utterly ridiculous. I mean there’s no way that they ever could have met that. But I have to also say that 8 percent to me is not acceptable. I mean that’s not the end. We’re going to start actually on Monday discussing the budget and I’m sure that there’ll be some cuts and get it down a little bit below that. But in all honesty in my personal opinion I would reduce staffing until we got down to a level that in my opinion would be acceptable which would probably be in the 3 to 4 percent range. That’s probably not where it’s going because nobody likes to lay off people.”
The Board of Supervisors will hold a work session November 23rd to review the tentative budget. The public may attend but cannot provide input until the public hearing November 30th.
The county budget must be finalized by December 20th.
