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General News: Village Adopts New Budget
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| The board of trustees reviewed the budget details at two public meetings last week. |
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| Village treasurer Stephen Affredou explains the budget. |
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| About 20 people attended Thursday's public hearing on the budget. |
January 31, 2011
By Ross Miller
On Thursday, the village of Cornwall-on-Hudson board of trustees approved a new budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year that will result in a 1.01 percent property tax increase to $9.04 per $1000 of assessed value. Spending in the general fund will rise 1.9 percent.
One item that remained in the new budget is funding for two full-time police officer positions. Last November, the village’s two full-time officers were told that their positions would be eliminated in six months. The police union is fighting that move, which it says should be a matter of negotiations between the village and the union.
When the budget was first presented earlier this month, a 23.7 percent increase in property taxes was forecast. Through salary and spending freezes, including cutting $40,000 from a proposal by the Storm King Fire Engine Co. #2 for firematics and firehouse maintenance, those increases were whittled down to create an austerity budget.
The vote on the budget came after two meetings and a public hearing in which residents had an opportunity to question spending and revenue. At a special meeting on Monday, January 24, the board approved a motion by Deputy Mayor Barbara Gosda that all department heads, except in the police department, cut five percent and ten percent from their bottom lines by Wednesday at noon. “We are a small community, and we need to live small,” Gosda said.
After later reviewing the cuts proposed by department heads, village treasurer Stephen Auffredou reported that they would net minimal savings. He was swift to explain that virtually none of the cuts proposed was realistic in the face of spending needs for the coming fiscal year. “The numbers work, but will [day-to-day] operations work? No, ” Auffredou argued.
Village resident Jan Smith, who is running for trustee in the March election, spoke at two of the meetings, urging the board to carefully consider employee salaries and benefits, which, trustee Doug Vatter pointed out, are mandated by contracts and state law. Bridget Flynn raised the issue of the impact of foreclosures on forecasting future revenue, to which both trustees Vatter and James Kane noted are safeguarded in the near term should nonpayment of property tax continue.
About 20 people attended the public hearing on Thursday, where Ron Tulloch pressed the board to consider what he took to be the key to future budget reductions, the need to reduce staff or the costs of maintaining current staffing levels. He suggested to the board both furloughs and reduced workloads as ways to realize savings. Tulloch further urged that whatever major cost-cutting initiatives could be developed should be presented to the community by way of a referendum.
Eric Ball and his wife asked about any initiatives that the board was considering to reduce energy use. Mayor Joe Gross recounted several actions aimed at “greening” village energy use.
Trustee candidate Jan Smith produced a list of several irregularities in the budget spreadsheet she had studied during the week, and the board carefully reviewed each concern, noting that all had been adjusted and were reflected in Thursday evening’s revised budget.
Final issues before a budget vote was taken centered on whether the state government in Albany would impose a cap on raising property taxes and to what extent the village debt should be paid down. Following trustees Kane and Edsall’s judgment that it would take some time for the state to issue any such mandate, the board generally agreed that it could discount that action for now, and that the village could make progress on paying its debt to ensure its bond rating not collapse into “junk status,” as trustee Vatter cautioned. The board then finalized adjustments and adopted the new budget.
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