The Plattsburgh Common Council approved the city’s 2020 budget Tuesday night. The $59.6 million dollar plan includes a $600,000 surplus and builds the fund balance.
Common Councilors unanimously voted to approve Plattsburgh’s 2020 budget Tuesday evening.
There was minimal discussion on the budget during the meeting because as Ward 1 Democrat Rachelle Armstrong and Democratic Mayor Colin Read noted they had been working on it for some time.
Armstrong: “We've been discussing it for several weeks now. So..”
Mayor Read: “The committees really came together and really helped.”
The week before the fiscal plan was approved, council budget officer Ward 2 Democrat Mike Kelly presented the 2020 budget projections. The budget includes revenues of $23,650,793; expenses of $22,974,532 and a surplus of $676,261. Following the council’s approval of the budget, Kelly said the city should reach a recommended Fund Balance level by 2021. “That puts our city in a very good position so that we have padding so that if something goes wrong, such as the economy, we’ll be ready. It gives us a certain level of comfort to know that we have a plan for our fund balance growth, a plan to control expenses, and a plan to keep our city solvent for many years into the future.”
One important factor in the budget is recreational facility fee increases that are expected to generate $347,000 in new revenue. Another is cuts in police and fire overtime. Ward 3 Democrat Elizabeth Gibbs explained during the November 21st Finance and Budget committee meeting there was a series of negotiations over the cuts. “I very plainly said to each of the Chiefs that the overtime budget I thought was too high and police and fire make up more than half of our overall budget. And so the payroll money that we're investing in that on top of overtime is a huge tax burden. And it's quite troublesome for me because I'm concerned about what the long term implications of that might be on our budget. And is it sustainable? And I was very direct with them about that and we just hashed it out.”
City taxpayers will see their mill rate, the cost per thousand of assessed property value, go down from $12.20 to $11.65, a 4.51% reduction.
Councilor Kelly is pleased that there was a cohesive effort between department heads, councilors and the mayor to produce the 2020 budget. “This year we worked very closely with each other. I think we've created a model for future budgets. Each of our department heads and councilors took that responsibility very, very seriously to go out and find savings and find efficiencies and there were a few increases in the budget that were justified and were necessary. But even those were done with a great deal of consideration and discussion.”
The budget includes expected increases in expenses of about 3.15 percent.
Plattsburgh’s 2020 budget does not exceed the state tax cap.
