Budget Discussions and a Stage

The Town Board - with 4 council members present - held a special meeting on November 7 to discuss the 2025 budget - and also the proposal to replace the stage at Schlathaus Park.

The meeting opened with a Public Hearing on the preliminary 2025 budget. A member of the public advocated for increasing funds for Senior Citizen programing, asserting that the Senior population is growing in the town. The public hearing was adjourned until the next Town Board meeting, where members of the public will again be able to ask questions. During the Public Comment period, citizens expressed support for ensuring that federal funding, due to expire at the end of this year, be spent on projects benefiting the town. Another citizen had questions about the process used by the board to make decisions, observing that some of the questions by council members seemed to be too late in the process and appeared as obstructionism rather than collaboration.

The town comptroller, Jessica Servidio, provided an overview of the budget.

Some highlights -- 3% salary increase for non-union employees, consistent with union employee contracts. Costs for workers comp, state retirement etc increasing. Legal costs increasing, IT costs -- the town's firewalls are nearing end of life, Central Hudson Costs increasing, Camao Water Management costs.

A long discussion about the appropriateness of medical benefit buy-outs for employees who have other insurance coverage. Right now the town is paying approx $44K/employee who get medical insurance, so in an attempt to reduce those costs, there is a proposal to provide an incentive to employees to use other insurance. A proposal of providing a $10K incentive was criticized (for a small number of non-union employees) -- the Teamsters currently have a $2500 buy-out, CSEA a 4,000 buy-out.

$$ for the Towns 150th anniversary, a suggestion to add an individual who could be trained as a fire inspector to supplement the current fire inspector. A discussion about the 2025 budget for police coverage.

Some other insights emerged during the discussion, providing a porthole into the previous administrations mismanagement..... Engineering bills from as long ago as 2021 still being sent in... meaning the books from 3 previous years need to be ammended, Previous years budget not accounting for debt service payments, meaning that other funds needed to be found to cover those expenses. On the plus side - increased return on the Town's investments will help on the revenue side as well as increased fines/penalty payments from increased law enforcement actions (a by product of more strictly enforcing traffic laws -- the primary purpose is safe streets).

It is very gratifying to hear the Town's Comptroller clearly and completely answer questions from the board members, demonstrating she has a firm grasp of the budget, the processes to manage the Town's funds - both revenues and expenses, the timing of those processes and the appropriate accounting for those funds.

The resolution on the budget was tabled.

A resolution to spend American Rescue Fund dollars to build a new stage at Schlathaus Parks was approved, with a recognition that the discussion held the previous Saturday with town officials (most of them) and members of the public was a good discussion and led to a good decision.

A resolution to approve the demolition for a building on All Angels Hill Road that was badly damaged in a fire was approved, enabling the costs to be recovered from insurance, was passed. Thankfully no one was hurt in the fire.