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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1984-04-10 - Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes 0258 MINUTES OF THE BUDGET HEARING HELD ON APRIL 10th, 1984 AT THE VILLAGE OFFICE AT 111 SOUTH RIDGE STREET, RYE BROOK, N.Y. AT 8 P.M. PRESENT: Mayor Kabcenell Trustees Meiskin, Nardi, Harris, Zak Attorney Kramer Treasurer Cortese Clerk Smith Mayor Kabcenell opened the meeting with resolutions for two Civil Service appointments. SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC WORKS. On the motion of Trustee Nardi, seconded by Trustee Zak, RESOLVED that Donald M. Brown, of 5 Bishop Drive South, Rye Brook, New York, be appointed Superintendent of Public Works, from Civil Service List No. 65-356. Trustee Meiskin voting AYE Trustee Nardi voting AYE Trustee Harris voting AYE Trustee Zak voting AYE Mayor Kabcenell voting AYE SUPERINTENDENT OF RECREATION. RESOLVED that Thomas A. Hroncich, of 11 Alden Road, Larchmont, New York, be appointed Superintendent of Recreation, from Civil Service List No. 64-798. Trustee Meiskin voting AYE Trustee Nardi voting AYE Trustee Harris voting AYE Trustee Zak voting AYE Mayor Kabcenell voting AYE BUDGET HEARING. _ Mayor Kabcenell said that the purpose of a Budget Hearing is to exchange information, to answer questions by the Board and the audience, to receive comments by the Board and the audience, and based on all of the available in the Board will deliberate and make any changes before final approval of the budget. After deciding upon the actual budget, the Board must then decide the pattern of tax payments. The order of the Budget Hearing will be: 1) Brief discussion of the budget in general. 2) Line by Line analysis of the budget. 3) Summary of the tax Levy and information about payments. After the general discussion of the budget and again after the line by line analysis of the budget, the chair will entertain questions, first from the Board and then from the audience. Questions will be answered now if possible, and if the information is not available, we will send the requested information to the questioner. In order - to make this possible, every questioner is requested to announce his name and address, so that we will have an opportunity to answer if we don't have the information here. The heads of departments are here to act as resource persons if we don't have the information, to help answer. In order to maintain an orderly flow of the hearing, I would ask that all comments and questions be addressed to the chair - cross conversation will not - �o� _H7Zmavctcrf I � f - P � I' Q25U be helpful. Only issues related to this budget are in order for this hearing. Let me again repeat that the purpose of this hearing is to provide information tothe audience, so that they might better understand the budget, and to the Board so that they can make the best judgements about this budget. It is not a political excercise, it is solely for the purpose of exchanging information. As a general review, the Budget is an estimate, the best estimate we can make for the year to come. We have to use all available information, past and present, but there will always be some unknowns - there is noone who can tell us how much snow will fall next year, or what equipment might break down. Because we have now used data processing for part of the year, we have much more information than was available before. Next year, when we have had a full year's experience, we will be able even better to predict what the budget should be for subsequent years. Some points that I think are salient in our discussion, and some of them were discussed in the budget message - the Mayor, Trustees and Village Clerk continue to serve without pay. There had been some confusion based on the way the State orders the description, and I'll talk about that later. Salary changes for Police and Highway Departments are mandatory by the contracts entered into by the Town of Rye in 1982, with the respective unions. These contracts will be in force until the end of December 1984. A major change in this budget is in an area called Central Garage. It is our intention to make a central garage to take care of all the repairs and service for all the Village vehicles - Police, Highway and Recreation. This way we can dispense supplies - fuel, oil, parts, tires at wholesale, or Stated Bid prices, which will give us control of the service of our vehicles and also a considerable cost saving. As a result of this there has been the moving around - of some items from previous budgets. We also hope to enter into an orderly purchase of, vehicles, particularly police cars, that will be related to their mileage and repair costs, so that we can more prudently buy them rather than spend money on repairs. We also have to recycle some of the police cars to replace some rentals we now have and some mileage costs. We are also participating in a regular review of equipment and you may have noticed in our newsletterthat police cars have some new lifesaving equipment etc. Along the way we will try to update the equipment we have, so that it serves the needs of the Village better. I would like to show you just a few items that I hope will help you understand something about the budget process before we go into the line by line items. The major changes that occurred in this year's budget over previous ones, had to do with certain contractual changes. There is an increase of $46,000 in Fire Protection for this year. Part of this is a 6% increase, and part is an extra month, since we have a 13-month contract for each of the next two years. Salary increases of $37,000 for Police and $24,000 for Highway are mandated under the existing contract. Library costs have increased $14,000 this year over last year. There is an additional Clerk-Typist indicated for the Village office at a salary of $12,500. Sanitation cast - an increase of $108,000 this year. This is not an entirely true number because the Sanitation Contract calls for a given figure for the next five years, and the increase therefore represents a somewhat less than 6% increase. There is a salary for a Mechanic's Assistant - this is really a transfer. He will be in the Central Garage, and those monies have been taken out of "repairs". v,cuer Employee Benefits, also mandated in relation to salaries and other things, shows an increase of some $60,000 this year. The Mayor demonstated with a chart to show the allocation of tax monies. Police 19.2% Sanitation 18.2% Employee Benefits 13.3% (includes State Retirement Fund, Social Security, Workmens Camp. and Health Benefits) Highway 9.9% Fire Protection 9.3% Parks & Recreation 7.2% Under Administration, we have lumped together all expenses related to Central Administration - Village Office salaries, Treasurer, Tax Collection (even though that is paid through the Town of Rye), the Clerk's office, Attorney, costs of Elections, Rent, Telephone, Postage, - all of these are general cost of administration of the Village. I have grouped together several items under overhead - insurance, consulting fees, bonding expenses, a contingent account - items really less than 1%, ambulance, dog control, youth programs, shade trees all of these fall into this category. Debt Service 3.7% Central Garage 3.2% (this is transferred from other areas) Library 3.2% Safety Inspection 1.6% Anticipated deficit 1.1% (although I will indicate to you later that it no longer exists) In the comparisons that we make there is always the question as to how does this relate to what happened before. There was no way to relate ' this to the 1983 Budget, which was really two budgets - Rye Town's January-December, and Rye Brook's June 183 to June '84, with five months overlapping. It was a seventeen month budget, with part of the money being raised by the Town and part by the Village - no possible way to make any comparison with the present budget. I therefore went back to the most recent full year budget - 1982. This is not really a budget, but a final financial statement, so these are the actual expenditures for the Town Unincorporated area. When I address this, I am only talking about the unincorporated area which is now Rye Brook. 1982 expenditures were listed at $2,800.000 - that is not really exactly right, because Federal Revenue Sharing was taken off before the expenditures were really related. The expenditures were really $3,200,000 and the revenue other than Real Property Taxes also had another $215,000 on them. The end result was that $2,330,000 was needed to be raised from Real Property Taxes - these were actual figures for 1982, and resulted is a tax rate of $38.44 per thousand. This figure multiplied by the total Assessed Valuation raised $1,838,000 from Real Property Taxes., resulting in a deficit of some $490,000. It is very hard to now to compare an actual budget that you assume will be accurate, with one that has about a half-million dollar deficit - so if this money which had to be raised, were raised accurately, the tax rate in 1982 would have been $48.75 per thousand. If the correct amount of money had been raised, there would have been no deficit, which is what you look to do in any budget. The tentative tax rate proposed here tonight is $50.19, although this will be a little lower, as I will explain to you in a few moments. This is really why I used the 1982 figures, because it is the only full year we can use as a comparison. If we try to compare 1982 with 1984, using the real cost of $3,210,000 in 1984 we project real appropriations of $3,825,000, results in a difference of $615,000 over two years. These are essentially mandated 026 increased costs from 1982 to 1984 — Police 130,000 Fire 130,000 Sanitation 130,000 Employee Benefits 100,000 Highway 50,000 Parks & Recreation 40,000 Library 22,000 Safety Inspections 10,000 a total of 612,000 ' without any other increases in any other area, which is kind of an equivalent of the difference in the appropriations for 1982 and the appropriations for 1984. For any of us there are two other things we ought to consider. For your tax dollar, coming from real property taxes, which is what comes out of your pocket — for people in School District 4, most of whom are in the Port Chester Sewer District, of your dollar — 50% goes for school taxes 27% County, Solid Waste and Sewer lg% Rye Town lz% Special Districts 19% Village of Rye Brook The total tax rate for all of the above is about $255 per thousand. In District 5, the figure is $278 per thousand which breaks down as follows: 57% School Taxes 22k% County, Solid Waste & Sewer 1}% Rye Town 1% Special Districts . 18% Village Taxes The last thing I want to cover is tax payments, and we will address the method of payment later on. In the 1983 Town budget, the tax rate for the Village was $45.81 and in that calendar year one half of the interim tax 13.27 for a total of $59.08 In 1984, based on our proposed budget, the second half of 83/84 13.27 and if we do what we did this year and divide the tax in half, and pay half this yea2, the payment due would be 25.08 and you would be paying a total of 38.35 instead of $59.08 which you paid last year. This represents in dollars out of your pocket, a 35% reduction this year over last year. Should it be divided differently, and that is what the Board will have to decide, for instance is threequarters were to be paid in 1984 and one quarter in 1985, then the tax rate might be $50.89 with one quarter left for 1985. By distributing the payments, it is possible to get a very stable tax rate. The alternative is to go down 35% this year and up 20% next year. Another thing to remember is that when you don't pay taxes at the beginning of the year, the money must be borrowed and you pay interest. You don't save money because you pay it next year. The money has to be paid one way or another, and the Board, when the budget is finalized, must make the determination as to how the money is collected. In response to a question from a resident regarding the schedule of payment for all taxes, it was explained that - Rye Town Tax and the balance of $13.27 Village taxes due in April School Taxes, half in September, half in January 1985 Village Tax for 1984/1985 yet to be determined, part must be in June. 0262 Resident Bernard Klem, questioned the deficit of $483,000, and how was'this to be paid off if everything remained the same, and continued year after year. How would we or our children end up paying for this eventually? Mayor Kabcenell said he did not know how to answer that other than to say that when you deficit finance, you borrow money on which you pay interest, but you still owe the money. It's like going on a shopping spree with a credit card, you pay interest on the amounts you charge, but you still owe the money. Mr. Klem asked whether in a State audit performed in connection with ' municipal budgets, would not the deficit have been caught, and at some - point we would have to face the catch up of this deficit with higher taxes. Mayor Kabcenell said that the State does an audit every three years, and it is now being done for the Town for the years 1980,81 and 82, it has not been completed, and I am sure it will show this deficit. Normally, what should happen, for instance, we thought we would have a deficit for 83/84 of $40,000 which was put into our budget. It has to be applied to the next year and pay it. This is what we did last year - $37,000 was applied to last year's budget from the prior year. Gene Strum of Betsy Brown Road said that the Town had a deficit for 1982 of half a million dollars, yet the tax rate they proposed for the Village in 1983 was again lower than the expenditures in 1982. That doesn't make sense. Mayor Kabcenell accepted that as a statement rather than a question! Ile said the tax rateassignedis 1983 was also significantly lower and I would just assume, although I have not seen the figures, that there will be further deficit accumulated in 1983. Barry Liebman of Berkely Drive, asked how these deficits were funded, where did the money come from to pay that, and who is liable for the repayment of the borrowed money. The Mayor said we are now in process of asking for an audit simply to relate to Rye Brook, to the unincorporated area budget, to make sure that gets balanced. I know there were some budget notes raised - you are not really supposed to raise tax anticipation notes unless there 'really is a tax anticipated. Themoneyhas to come from some place and it obviously has been borrowed and to the best of my knowledge I haven't seen anything to indicate that it was paid back. Morton Smith of North Ridge Street said that he did not ever recall that the Town ever said there was a deficit. Was the Mayor suggesting that they were hiding the deficit? The Mayor said he did not want words put into his mouth, what he is suggesting is that it is very clear that there was a large deficit which was not addressed in subsequent years. His only point in making the comparison was not to address the Town's finances, but to address our budget rate - what the real rate would have been, so the people of Rye Brook can make the comparison. Mr. Simon of James Way asked if anyone had thought of dealing with the deficit problem by cutting expenses instead of raising taxes? Mayor Kabcenell explained that most of the increases in the budget were items mandated by previous contracts, although that did not mean that we would not have entered into the same contract, our attempt at creating a central garage is an attempt to run the Village more efficiently and therefore cut come of the expenditures. As we review the budget line by line, we can deal with some of the individual issues. Ken Heller of Lincoln Avenue asked if the deficit we are talking about is the MTA taxes which were not collected. Mayor Kabcenell said this is totally unrelated. Mr. Heller said that in all the years he has 0263 been around, he has never heard of any deficit. Mayor Kabeenell said that if he would look at the statement for the unincorporated area of the Town of Rye for 1982, there is about a half million dollar deficit by the end of 1982. Trustee Nardi said Mr. Heller is 100% right, he also did not think this deficit had ever been discussed and that's where the problem is. Mr. Heller said the figures on the board which the Mayor was using would not make sense to him since he had to point of reference. The Mayor offered to give him a copy of the financial statement from which he can take the relevant figures. The cost of running the unincorporated area in 1982, was $48.75, whether we raised the money or not, and the Mayor said the reason he showed it is so that you get some feeling of comparison - in effect this may be a 1% increase per year, however - this would have been considerably larger had the assessables not increased. Morton Smith made the observation that what we are really dealing with is a million dollar deficit or more, if we take the MTA deficit which we knew about, and this half million dollar deficit which we never knew about. J.J. Lawrence asked why were going backwards and not forwards, and suggested that we accept the fact that there is a deficit and move forward. The Mayor said that he had used these prior figures so that people would understand what the tax rate is. Mr. Liebman of Berkeley Drive said one of his concerns is the fact ;'.hat assessables have increased at a very substantial rate over the last two years, and what are we going to be facing in terms of increases in the budget over the next couple of years. The Mayor said he thinks it fair to assume that for a municipality as for individuals, costs will go up in relation to the general cost increase cycle. We will try to contain it as much as possible. Mr. Liebman said he had some concern because without the increase in assessables the budget rate would translate to something like a 12/13% - increase. The Mayor said he shared the same concern, and would hope that we now have a budget which.reflects accurately what is going on. Gene Strum commented that a substantial part of the increase is the Fire Contract and Sanitation Contract, both of which are stablized over the next five years. There was a 24% increase in the Fire Contract from 1982 to 1983, and the next two years will each be 6%. That will help. '. Trustee Nardi asked to make it clear that the $483,000 deficit mentioned before is in no way covered in this budget - that will have to be addressed by the Town of Rye. The Mayor moved to a line by line discussion of the categories, which are designated by the State, and what is covered by them. Trustee Harris commented on the salary provided for the Special Assistant to the Mayor, George Morrow, and acknowledged that he has been an enormous help in setting up the administration of the Village, and felt the figure should be reconsidered. The Mayor said for information purposes, an analysis of similar positions in 15 villages in Westchester, in 1984, the average salary for such a position is $50,672, and also indicated that he shared the feeling that Mr. Morrow has been the most essential, the most helpful, the most knowledgeable, the best-trained person we could have hoped for, and wish the Village Board would consider modifying this number. Trustee Meiskin asked for further explanation of the $50,000 "average" salary. The Mayor said he got information which is on record for 15 similar communities, and added the figures, dividing by 15, we are about in the middle as far as size goes. The range was from $37,000 to $70,000. Trustee Zak asked if we could put in a number now, but the Mayor said the Board should digest the information, and when the budget is passed, the Board's recommendation would indicate the number to be included. 0264 Ken Heller said he was somewhat concerned, because when Rye Brook was being formed, there was discussion about nominal management costs, and the people did not vote for a Village Manager, and that people still employed by the Town were being under-utilized. The people have not asked if they want a full time person, and he thinks it should be put before the residents to vote if they want a full time person at a really high salary. The Mayor said that we do not have a Village Manager, we have an administrative assistant, to which Mr. Heller responded that was his point, he thinks a $5000 increase is substantial, and now we _ are talking about being very kind andraising it some more, and we have to think of the size of the community and what you people promised us originally in the way of government to keep costs down rather than handing out large increases. The Mayor said he didn't think the Board had any intention of being kind, rather the intention of being just. Trustee Nardi addressed Mr. Heller's comments, by saying that when we talked about needing very little management for the Village, we were talking about the Village as it existed in the first year, when we were not providing services, and we contracted for them with the Town of Rye. The Village of Rye Brook is now providing its own services, and I think your real case is with the Town about excess baggage down there, rather than with the Village. Gene Strum pointed out that the Town Supervisor's salary was dropped $27,000 this year. Bernhard Klem asked if someone was paying attention to the fact that we are contracting with an outside data processing company as opposed to an in-house installation - some of the microcomputers are quite sophisticated and could probably handle anything we are doing. -� 1990.4 Contingent Account - the Mayor explained that this is a new - category for us - an amount of money which is set aside because there will be salary increases probably when the Police and Highway Contracts expire at the end of December, and if you don't have this in -- there, you will certainly build in a deficit. Roz Klem asked in connection with garbage, whether any consideration . :load been given to recycling. The Mayor said there has been some preliminary discussions and we will continue them. Paper is the most obvious item, but it depends on how much paper is worth at a given time. j ')`•,} Trustee Harris said we would save a dumping fee of $17.50 per ton. Now that bottles are returnable, we should encourage that. Library - Rye Brook shares the costs with Port Chester, based on the number of card holders, which is about one third for the Village. Trustee Meiskin said there had been meetings to discuss the various ways of apportioning the costs, and this is the best way for us. Mr. Simon of James Way said he felt that things were accepted as they were Without investigation of given figures, with a "this is what we have to face" attitude. The Mayor suggested to him that if he perhaps would attend meetings regularly, he would see that we investigate as carefully as we know how, every single one of these items, and thought it was unfair of him to assume that we accept them, to people who have been working very hard to make these changes. We have look very carefully at the Library budget and feel that this is the fairest way for the Village of Rye Brook to deal with their costs, so the fact that he is unhappy with it, does not mean that the Board has not done its homework. Trustee Meiskin said he could understanding Mr. Simon's thinking, sitting back there, however he explained, this budget is the culmination of a full year's work of many investigations. For example, the Fire Contract took up six to seven months of time, negotiations and contractual relations with employees takes up many months of time. 0265 Trustee Nardi pointed out that by establishing a Central Garage is an indication of our not accepting things as they were, after a lot of evaluation and checking of costs. The Mayor commented on the Sanitation Contract, for which we received a single bid, which was original three to four hundred thousand more than the final figure. This Village Board has spent more time than anyone before them in investigating costs. The figure of $695,000 for Garbage, is $600,000 under the contract _ with Carlucci, and $95,000 for dumping fees to the County. Both of these figures will be constant for the next five years, so this number will not increase along with other increased costs. An anticipated deficit of $40,000 can be eliminated, since it was created by not receiving funds from a State Municipal Aid package, and the State has now come up with the money. Trustee Meiskin, on the subject of doing homework as well as a suggestion that we should be utilizing services of Town employees, asked if we had any figures with respect to administration costs in the Town compared to the Village, since the Town now has very little to administrate. The costs now for administrative service in the Town, that's not including the separate departments of tax collection and assessment, just central administration in the Town, is about $190,000, in salaries, and for the Village of Rye Brook in central administration, which I can categorically say has ten times the amount of work, are $99,000, so I think the fault may not lie in our administrative budget but may lie somewhere else. The Mayor went through the list of anticipated revenues other than real property revenues. With the changes made so -far, the proposed budget called for $3,174,250 to be raised by tax levy, with a tentative assessed valuation of $63,810,000, which comes out to $49.75 per thousand. The only other item to be discussed is the payment schedule for the taxes — the law requires that some tax be collected in June, the only question is how much. Trustee Meiskin felt that the Mayor's suggestion to try and stabilize payments on a calendar year basis with the proportion of tax paid before the end of the year, was a very good idea. The Board will deliberate on the schedule to be dealt with when the budget is passed. The Budget Hearing was adjourned at 10.20 PM. There were two requests for approval from the Planning Board, for the Rye Town Hilton and Arrowwood, which will be dealt with at the Regular Meeting on April 24th, 1984. The meeting ended at 10.30 PM.