On the Town with Supervisor Reese Berman…

This has been a challenging year for all of us, and our Town, like all government entities, is struggling with the impact of reduced revenues.

In this article I will talk about the budget and then about a new idea that we are considering: the hiring of a Town Administrator.

Budget
The Town Board has worked to keep the Town Budget as low as possible and has continued to reduce our expenditures since the December 20 vote on the 2009 budget. The budget was passed with a Town tax increase of 4.5%. The Town tax represents approximately 15.5% of your total tax bill, the County tax is 16.7%, and the remaining 67.8% is the School Tax.

Due to the shrinkage of the assessment roll between commencement of the budget preparation in September and calculation of the tax rates in March caused by on-going settlements of tax certiorari proceedings, the actual tax increase is 4.62%. The average homeowner with a house valued at approximately $1,200,000 will have an increase of $146.36 in annual Town taxes.

Even though we reduced staff to 2002 levels and reduced expenses by $294,000 below 2008 expenses, the impact of increased costs for services and supplies, and reductions of over $600,000 in our projected revenues necessitated this modest, but unwelcome, tax increase.

In addition to property taxes, our main sources of revenue are mortgage recording tax receipts, sales tax receipts, interest on investments, and permit fees. Sales tax receipts for 2008 came in over budget but were still almost $13,000 lower than in 2007. We saw severe drops in mortgage recording tax receipts, interest on investments, and permit fees, and these revenue sources are projected to continue to decline. Our 2009 revenues are projected to be over $1,000,000 lower than in 2008.

Here are some of the ways we reduced expenses.

In May, 2008 we:

These measures resulted in a savings of over $300,000.

v In preparing for the 2009 budget we secured further reductions from each of our departments totaling $572,770. This included savings of $309,000 from the elimination of 4½ more positions and the reduction of hours for some staff. Almost all Town departments have been affected, including the Police Department.

Since the beginning of 2009, three additional people have left Town employment. We are not planning on filling those positions at this time, and the savings will go into (1) increasing our contingency line, because the reduction in our police staff will almost certainly lead to more overtime; and (2) reducing our mortgage recording tax projections by $100,000. We felt that realistic planning for anticipated cost increases and revenue losses was the most responsible way to handle these savings.

To make up for the loss in the Highway and other Departments, we are sharing staff in new ways. For example, under the organization of our Superintendent of Public Works, Rich Fon, employees in the Recreation and Parks Department assisted the Highway Department in snow removal during the many storms we had this winter. In a second example, staff members from the Tax Receiver’s office are working in the Recreation and Parks, Planning, and Town Clerk’s Departments several days a week during the months when the Tax Receiver’s Department is less busy.

We are well aware that due to economic conditions beyond our control, our projected revenues in mortgage recording tax, sales tax and interest may come in even lower than projected. We are keeping close tabs on these revenues, and we are prepared to plan for a shortfall in a careful way.

To that end, the Town Board is committed to evaluating:

We are well aware that our residents, like people all over the world, are under unusual financial stress. So is the Town. And we feel we produced the best budget we could, given the circumstances.

Town Administrator
During the more than three years that I have served as Supervisor, I have had frequent opportunities to interact, confer and consult with professional managers and administrators of several Westchester municipalities, and I have considered whether it would be advantageous for North Castle to create such a position. I discussed this issue with the Town Board, and we scheduled a presentation and question and answer discussion with two town administrators and a village manager at a public work session last June. We followed up by creating the Administrator Review Task Force to study relevant considerations. We are not considering the position of Town Manager because it includes authority to hire and fire personnel.

We were deliberate in our selection of the Task Force, considering areas of expertise that would be important in the make-up of the group. The Task Force presented its report at our last Town Board meeting and made a unanimous recommendation to “hire a Town Administrator as soon as possible.” We will move expeditiously to draft a resolution to provide for a Town Administrator. Once we have given the public ample time to comment, the Town Board will vote on the proposal.

Copies of the excellent report are available on the What’s New page of the Town web site. Additionally, there are TV segments on both the Administrator and on the Budget that can be viewed on the Town television channel and on the What’s New page of the Town’s web site.