by Alex Brooks
The Grafton Town Board came to agreement on its 2014 budget at the November 12 Budget workshop. The tax levy is expected to rise by about 0.7%. This is a bit less than the 1.4% increase that was in the Preliminary Budget presented at the October 28 Public Hearing. [private]At the budget workshop this week, Councilman Rick Ungaro persuaded the rest of the Board to lower the contractual expense budgets on four different lines for a total decrease of $6,200. That, minus a decrease in expected Town Clerk revenue of $1,400, was the difference between the Preliminary Budget and the budget now slated to be adopted.
Total General Fund appropriations are a bit lower than last year, and General Fund revenues are expected to be significantly lower than last year. Total Highway appropriations are $26,650 higher than last year, and Highway revenues are expected to be 25,500 higher than last year.
The largest increase in Highway appropriations was in Capital Outlay for Equipment, which was increased from $36,000 to $52,000. The higher revenue came from an increase of $20,500 in CHIPS money and an increase in the amount of County Sales Tax allocated to the Highway Fund, from $10,000 to $15,000.
The pay of most Town officials is unchanged from last year. The Assessor’s salary is $4,000 less, and the Highway Superintendent and Code Enforcement Officer each will get raises of $1,500 per year. The pay of the Town Highway crew was raised by 25 cents per hour, which is about 1.5%.
At the October public hearing on the budget former Town Supervisor Tyler Sawyer brought his laptop and made detailed comments on many individual lines in the budget. This started out a bit adversarial when he pointed out that the new Assessor does not intend to maintain the County database for Grafton real property, as former Assessor Craig Surprise did, and the cost of having the County do it will come back to the taxpayers in the form of County “chargebacks.”
This issue came up again at the November 12 budget workshop when Councilman Rick Ungaro proposed lowering the Assessor’s salary from $19,000 to $18,000 to compensate for this difference. Ungaro said when he voted for the new Assessor, he wasn’t aware that there was a difference in the scope of the job each one was proposing to do. However, none of the other Councilpersons were willing to go along with this, since the salary of the new assessor had already been agreed upon and published.
After Sawyer moved on to other topics in October, the public hearing became friendlier, with Supervisor Higgins thanking him several times for his detailed and informative comments.
One of the Town Highway workers also spoke at the Public Hearing. He said he wouldn’t be able to pay a mortgage with the pay he gets, and he is only able to work for the Town because he doesn’t have a mortgage. Highway Superintendent Hasbrouck backed him up, saying his crew went way beyond the call of duty responding to storms over the past couple of years. He noted that his guys did culvert replacement work that other towns bid out. He concluded, “We have a good crew, and we should compensate them,” meaning by more than the 25 cents per hour that was already in the budget.
Councilman Rick Ungaro came to the Budget Workshop with perhaps about a dozen changes he wanted to make to individual lines. Most, but not all, were things that Tyler Sawyer had mentioned at the October Public Hearing.
Not all of his changes were accepted. Councilwoman Barbara Messenger cautioned him several times about the inadvisability of keeping budget lines too close to the minimum amount needed and leaving no room for unforeseen or unexpected expenses.
There was a negotiation about each line, with Mike Crandall several times suggesting compromises that the group could agree on. In the end $800 was cut from the Justices’ contractual expense, $2,700 from the Independent Auditing & Accounting line, $2,000 from the Assessor’s contractual expense and $700 from the Dog Control contractual expense.
Displeasure
Supervisor Frank Higgins displayed some displeasure at Ungaro’s budget-changing agenda. When Ungaro asked questions about particular lines, Higgins said if he is going to suggest major changes to the budget, he should already have done his research and know the answers. There were very hostile exchanges between the two of them at several points during the meeting, and Higgins was at times just insulting to Ungaro.
At the end of the meeting Ungaro asked what the effect on the budget would be if the Highway workers were given a 3% raise, as Tyler Sawyer had suggested at the Public Hearing. No one could figure that out exactly right on the spot, but it appeared that it might take the Town’s budget over the tax cap. After a discussion the raise was left at 25 cents per hour as before.[/private]