Supervisor Scott Russell has delivered a tentative budget for 2017 calling for a 7.63 percent tax rate increase.
The $44,136,421 spending plan requires a total tax levy increase of 7.81 percent. Its adoption will require the adoption of a local law authorizing the board to pierce the state tax levy limitation, which this year is set at .68 percent.
Russell called the tentative budget “the culmination of several difficult decisions.”
He said it is “unrealistic” to expect the town to meet the requirements of the tax cap year after year without “causing long-term injury to Southold’s fiscal health.” The cap — which is a limitation on the tax levy, not on spending or the tax rate — is set at the lesser of 2 percent or the rate of inflation.
The town’s health insurance premium cost increased 12.1 percent for 2017, from $5,636,926 to $6,322,711.
Russell included just over $2.4 million for road resurfacing and drainage projects in the 2017 budget.
“This budget reflects the necessity to maintain a healthy fund balance to meet growing demands on town services and to invest in our infrastructure, which has been severely compromised by recent weather events,” the supervisor wrote in a budget message accompanying the release of the budget this afternoon.
It contains no new positions that had not already been established in the 2016 budget, he said.
The budget reflects a spending increase of 1.44 percent over 2016 and includes spending of $1.77 million from the town’s fund balance, 40 percent less than the fund balance appropriated in 2016 to pay operating expenses.
See budget statistics summary below.
Russell urged the town board to “resist appropriating any more money from the fund balance to reduce the property tax increase.”
“One of a town’s chief indicators of sound fiscal health is the level of its fund balance,” Russell wrote. “The taxpayers were rewarded for past efforts that have allowed us to recently refinance outstanding debt which will result in approximately $2 million in future obligations.”
He said it may be necessary to reduce staffing levels through attrition in coming years.
Councilman James Dinizio said this afternoon the situation the town finds itself in is “what happens when you put things off to stay under a cap.” As a result, town roads are “in terrible shape,” he said, and the police radio system, “which has been neglected for too long,” must be upgraded. “Our police have no confidence in their portable radios,” he noted. Dinizio said he could not comment on specifics in the budget because he had not had an opportunity to review it. Russell delivered the budget at about 4 p.m., complying with the Sept. 30 deadline imposed on him by state law.
“I’ll look forward to working with the board as we craft a budget that continues to balance the needs to meet financial obligations with the need to cut costs,” Russell wrote.
The town board will hold a public hearing on Oct. 18 on a local law authorizing it to pierce the tax levy limitation. If it subsequently passes the local law by a supermajority vote, the board can then approve a budget that pierces the tax levy cap— in a separate vote after another public hearing on the budget itself.
Under state law, the board now has the opportunity to revise the supervisor’s tentative budget. It must hold a public hearing on a preliminary budget — the tentative budget, as amended — on or before the Thursday immediately following the general election. After the public hearing, the town board may make additional changes to the preliminary budget before adopting a final budget, which it must do no later than N.
The preliminary budget, as amended, shall be finally adopted by resolution of the town board not later than Nov. 20.
