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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPublic Hearing . SOUTHOLD TOWN BOARD PUBLIC HEARING November 4, 2015 4:00 PM Present: Supervisor Scott Russell Justice Louisa Evans Councilman William Ruland Councilwoman Jill Doherty Councilman James Dinizio, Jr. Councilman Bob Ghosio, Jr. * * Deputy Town Clerk Lynda Rudder Town Attorney Bill Duffy This hearing was opened at 4:00 PM SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Would everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag? Thank you. At this point, there's a copy of the budget outside if anyone hasn't had the chance to review it. We are looking for any public comment on the budget as proposed. COUNCILMAN GHOSIO: NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Preliminary Budget and Preliminary Capital Budget of the Town of Southold, Suffolk County, New York for the fiscal year beginning on January 1, 2016 has been prepared and approved by the Southold Town Board and filed in the Office of the Town Clerk at the Southold Town Hall, 53095 Main Road, Southold, New York, where they are available for inspection and where copies may be obtained by any interested person during business hours. FURTHER NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, that the Town Board of the Town of Southold will meet and review said Preliminary Budget and Preliminary Capital Budget and hold a public hearing thereon at the Southold Town Hall, 53095 Main Road, Southold, New York, in said Town at 4:00 p.m. and at 7:00 p.m., on Wednesday, November 4, 2015, and at such hearing any persons may be heard in favor of or against the 2016 Preliminary Budget and 2016 Preliminary Capital Budget.as compiled, or for or against any item or items therein contained. FURTHER NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that pursuant to Section 108 of the,Town Law, the following are proposed yearly salaries of members of the Town Board, the Town Clerk and the Superintendent of Highways: SCHEDULE OF SALARIES FOR ELECTED OFFICIALS (ARTICLE 8 OF TOWN LAW) Officer Supervisor $ 104,417 2016 Budget Hearings, page 2 November 4, 2015 ,, Members of the Town Board (4) @ $ 34,390 Town Justice & Member of the Town Board, Fishers Island $ 52,443 Town Justices (2) @ $ 70,348 Town Clerk $ 100,612 Superintendent of Highways $ 104,417 Tax Receiver $ 39,256 Assessors (3) @ $ 75,203 Trustees (5) @ $ 18,991 SUMMARY OF TOWN BUDGET 2016 PRELIMINARY - Appropriations Less. Less and Provisions Estimated Unexpended Amount to be Code Fund for Other Uses Revenues Balance Raised by Tax A General $ 30,591,587 $ 4,562,808 $ 2,500,000 $ 23,528,779 B General-Outside Village 2,287,486 1,491,058 590,000 206,428 DB Highway Fund 5,942,010 443,580 250,000 5,248,430 CD Community Development 49,165 49,165 - -- H3 Community Preservation Fund 12,711,500 6,507,500 6,204,000 - CS Risk Retention Fund 542,000 542,000 - - MS Employees Health Plan - - - - Total-Town $ 52,123,748 $ 13,596,111 $ 9,544,000 $ 28,983,637 Orient Road Improvement DB1 District $ . 3,190 $ - $ 440 $ 2,750 East-West Fire Protection SF District 759,191 285 6,000 752,906 SM Fishers Island Ferry District 4,080,900 3,000,250 • 276,772 803,878 SR Solid Waste Manage District 4,138,507 1,902,700 250,000 1,985,807 SS1 Southold Wastewater District - - - 17,155 (17,155) SS2 Fishers Island Sewer District 31,500. 31,500 - - F I Waste Manage District 614,871 52,150 - 562,721 Orient Mosquito District 88,430 - - 88,430 Subtotal-Special Districts $ 9,716,589 $ 4,986,885 $ 550,367 $ 4,179,337 Orient-East Marion Park District $ 54,000 $ 10,000 $ - $ 44,000 Southold Park District 327,726 - - 327,726 Cutchogue-New Suffolk Park Dist. 140,000 - - 140,000 Mattituck Park District 535,756 34,435 80,930 420,391 Subtotal-Park Districts $ 1,057,482 $ 44,435 $ 80,930 $ 932,117 2016 Budget Hearings page 3 November 4, 2015 Fishers Island Fire District $ - $ - $ - $ - Orient Fire District - - - - East Marion Fire District 599,337 89,928 - 509,409 Southold Fire District 1,896,950 24,190 - 1,872,760 Cutchogue Fire District 1,389,650 1,000 - 1,388,650 Mattituck Fire District 1,904,854 - - 1,904,854 Subtotal-Fire Districts $ 5,790,791 $ 115,118 $ - $ 5,675,673 Total-All Districts $ 16,564,862 $ 5,146,438 $ 631,297 $ 10,787,127 Grand Totals This Page 68,688,610 00 18,742,549 00 10,175,297 00 39,770,764 00- SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Would anyone like to comment? ROBERT DUNN: Robert Dunn, Peconic. It's not a comment, it's really just a question and perhaps last night would have been more appropriate time to ask it but I was working at the Board of Elections. When you do an agenda item and you'll transfer from one budget line to another, those budget lines don't necessarily appear here in this same wording, correct? They are more general? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: The budget lines on the detail? Do you have the detailed budget. JUSTICE EVANS: Our work papers have it. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Yes, it would. Actually, you should have the accounting.... MR. DUNN: Let me give you a for instance. Let's just say you found out in November you were running out of money for the police overtime.... SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Okay, I see what you are saying. MR. DUNN: And you transferred money out of another thing... SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: On that budget, no. when I did the tax, when I did the budget community discussion what I did was I included the budget work papers which breaks it down line by line but no, that doesn't. for accounting purposes we have, if you look on personnel, it will be broken down with three or four lines with more specificity but for the budget it isn't. I can always get you a copy of the work papers which will show you line by line... MR. DUNN: So there is another kind of... SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: It's work papers. Yes, it's the work papers that the Town Board uses, so we generally, you know, they are work products but I make them available to anybody that wants them. I will get you one. 2016 Budget Hearings page 4 November 4, 2015 COUNCILMAN GHOSIO: Are you talking about in general when we make a budget modification during the course of the year? MR. DUNN: Yes, you find something where you come up short. COUNCILWOMAN DOHERTY: We have one on tonight's agenda. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Yes, that would be, when you look at that.... MR. DUNN: I will give you a for instance. You will take money out of Goldsmiths, I know you set aside a certain amount for that, and you use it for something else but Goldsmiths never appears here, I guess it appears on the other item you are talking about. Right? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Goldsmiths would.... MR. DUNN: I am not talking specifically about that, I just know that that's an example. COUNCILMAN GHOSIO: When we make a budget modification in July, to move money from place to place... JUSTICE EVANS: This is not final, this is just what we work from.... COUNCILWOMAN DOHERTY: Each line item on the budget has its own number. MR. DUNN: Right. COUNCILWOMAN DOHERTY: So when we are switching out, it might be under the same department... MR. DUNN: But those numbers aren't reflected in here, correct? COUNCILWOMAN DOHERTY: They are on here. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: No, he doesn't have the accounting numbers. COUNCILMAN DINIZIO: What he is talking about is like when we do an appropriation from last year, last year's budget or money that was left over or not. MR. DUNN: Right. COUNCILWOMAN DOHERTY: Oh, okay. COUNCILMAN DINIZIO: We don't anticipate switching money in the budget. MR. DUNN: You can't be exact, I understand. 2016 Budget Hearings page 5 November 4, 2015 COUNCILMAN DINIZIO: I don't think we even anticipate it, we just, if we need money from one line and want to transfer it to another, we just find a line that's appropriate and transfer it. we are going to do it tonight. MR. DUNN: Right. There's two or three.... SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Just in the interest of clarity, this is the general budget proposal you have. We do have a budget work papers that breaks it down line by line... MR. DUNN: Oh, okay. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: It also shows what we had allocated for 2015, what we have spent so far and then what we estimate spending. MR. DUNN: Inaudible. What you will need for 16. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Right. MR. DUNN: Thank you. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Sure. Would anybody else like to address the Town Board on this proposed budget? (No response) What I do want to quickly cover is, I know you have probably been reading about it, the Southold Town Board is discussing the prospect of perhaps moving money back into the budget to bolster the fund balance. It is just a discussion. This current budget, as it is proposed, does not include any of these changes. What I did was I outlined the changes for the Board just to give them an understanding of what might happen should the Board want to put money back into the budget to bolster the fund balance line. And if we were to add the $250,000 which we took out of the fund balance, if we were to add that back for the highway fund, the increase on the tax rate would be .86 percent which would develop an overall tax rate of 2.16. The current budget that is subject to this hearing actually calls for a 1.3, so it would go from a 1.3 percent to a 2.16. If we added $500,000 to just highway, the overall tax increase would go to 3.01. If we, instead of adding it to highway, added it to the general fund of the town, if we added $500,000, the overall tax increase would be about a 2.93 %. It comes at a little less than if we added the $500 to just highway because the general fund of the town has larger assessed value than the highway fund because the highway fund excludes the Village of Greenport. So when you are taking the same amount of money and you are splitting up less assessment, the rate would go up higher. Those are some of the things we talked about as to what we are going to do as a Board. I know we discussed it today. the Board is going to have to, I guess they are going to ponder it and then make decisions on the 17`h. If we had to do something, if we do something it would have to be done by the 17`h, prior to the adoption of the budget. - MR. DUNN: If you have to do it, you have to do it. I don't have a problem with it. When you go over the 2 %.... - 2016 Budget Hearings page 6 November 4, 2015 SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: No, the way the 2 % is calculated and this is another thing, the overall tax rate, to complicate things, would actually go down still. There's a separate line on your tax bill, I believe it might say Article 7, Suffolk County Real Property tax law, I haven't seen my tax bill in a while but it's one of the bottom lines. That is the amount of money that gets reimbursed by Suffolk County each year to property owners who are successful in grieving their taxes, so they get a reduction in assessment. Generally the taxes are paid in advance of that reduction. They get a refund. Sometime the refund could be for the past two, three, four years, depending on the case. All of that money is paid out by Suffolk County. They collect it back in that line when the tax bill goes out each December. So Suffolk County makes itself whole by extending that. For tax cap purposes, that gets factored into the town tax rate. So the reduction, it substantially increased last year, very unique settlement. Went from about a little over one million dollars to 2.3, 2.4 million in one year. This year it actually went down to about $954,000. So theoretically, by reducing that line that much, the town is removed that much from spending, even though it really hasn't. The consequence of the tax line is that we get held accountable when the number goes up, even though it is beyond the control of the Board but at the same time and with all due candor, we get credit for it when it goes down even though, again, it is outside our aegis. But because that line went down about 60 % this year, when you factor that back into the tax rate, the overall tax rate goes down substantially which allows us to raise actually the town taxes, we could actually raise them to about 5.82 % and still be under the cap. In fact we would still be under the cap by just a little bit. Not that I am proposing that, so please do not misconstrue the fact that I want to raise taxes 5 % after an election, that is just simply not true despite some probably accusing me of that. Anybody else? (No response) 2016 Budget Hearing 7:00 PM SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: At this point, would anyone like to come up and comment on any of the proposed budget items? PETER HARRIS: Good evening everybody. First of all, congratulations to everybody in the elections. I am here tonight to bring up a, ask a question, the fact that I would, personally, like to see the Town Board in the Highway Department, their operating budget, under general repairs, DB5110, there is a line for paving. The town receives over $420,000 from the State of New York through the CHIPS program. I personally feel, having been the prior superintendent and that the Town should mirror the State's allotment for resurfacing of roads matching, I mean, I believe and please correct me if I am wrong, this year the town had budgeted $175,000 originally in resurfacing. Years ago, $175,000 went a long way. In 2015, $175,000 doesn't go far at all. I feel that the town relies a tremendous amount on what we receive from New York State and this year I believe they got an additional $63,000 because and not just Southold, every township in the State of New York because it was such a terrible winter and an adverse effect on our roads and with what is allocated through the state and what you have in the general repairs budget, you never are going to catch up. I mean, there's over 400 miles of road, multiply that by 2, there's over 400 lane miles of road and I just feel that Superintendent Orlando, they have resurfaced a fair amount of roads but it's really, it's a drop in the bucket what still needs to be done. And for $400,000 over the course of your entire budget, from where I am standing on this side of the 2016 Budget Hearings page 7 November 4, 2015 microphone, $400,000 is a drop in the bucket. That your road system in this town is one of your major things that we own and we are responsible for the safety and well-being of the traveling public, so from citizen Pete Harris speaking, $400,000 compared to $400,000 from the state just to mirror that contribution that gives the Superintendent of Highways that $800,000 a year amount of money to spend to upgrade our roads. Thank you very much. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: You are right, Pete. Just for this year, the budget that is being proposed, we had actually allocated outright $250,000 plus in talking to Ken LaValle I was able to get another $250,000 plus CHIPS, at least for the following year but your suggestion is something we probably should have been doing all along. MR. HARRIS: Thank you. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you, Pete. Would anyone else like to address the Town Board on the budget? (No response) Okay, what I should again is explain the fund balance discussion we had today, that way it's on camera. Go ahead, Bob. ROBERT DUNN: I don't know if this is really appropriate for the budget but it's about income. We ordered the windrow turner, has been ordered or is being ordered, I am sure there is going to be some legal stuff. Regardless of that, the product that is made there I think is very good and it sold for a penny and a half per pound, there is a company called Hamptons something and they produce out of Yaphank basically the same product that I saw sold in a bag in Waldbaum's for $9. I think it was about 30 pounds, which would be 100 times what we are getting for it and I was just going to suggest as a point of income, we consider bagging it and selling it in a bag. I think it would be foolhardy.... SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: I would agree. It's compelling, several years ago under a different Town Board, Bill, were you on it at the time? We were proposing to buy a bagging machine and we had actually bought a building to house the building machine. We ran into some problems with regard to OSHA, concerns on the part of the union, ventilation, all of those things. Also, the building itself, we came in substantially higher. Just... MR. DUNN: We have a building that we used to use for three separate recycling, we doubled, Inaudible, that we are not fully using as well as we could. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: That's a fair point. I am just trying to remember what building that is. COUNCILMAN RULAND: The best way to describe the whole situation is between a rock and a hard place. There were two options, the Town could purchase the equipment and bag the material themselves, we ran into substantial union problems. Then we said the other option is we will have an outside contractor come, bag whatever you want, 10,000 bags, no, because the union has rights to the work that they didn't want to do. MR. DUNN: Why wouldn't the union want to do it? 2016 Budget Hearings page 8 November 4, 2015 COUNCILMAN RULAND: They never really said. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: I am not so sure they weren't willing to, they wanted to make sure that first of all, we would not hire more people to have appropriate personnel and then when you start factoring personnel costs versus profit margins,,it gets tight. It's very expensive to hire new help. MR. DUNN: Agreed. You would need to do it with the staff that you have. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Well, that wasn't going to be likely in that environment, in that scenario. Things have changed a little bit down there, it's probably a subject for discussion we can have now. MR. DUNN: Even if you turned out and made a deal and said, we get four guys in on Saturday and bag stuff. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: I think this is a discussion we should have, it's a good idea. The one thing I would say... MR. DUNN: Let me just ask you something, I will give you questions for, I am talking more the marketing side of, who in this town, retail, would want to be selling something called Hamptons when they could have something called Southold when they do business in Southold? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: I agree. I agree. One thing we haven't done well is market, it is a good product... MR. DUNN: A very good product but people don't want to go and fill their trunk but they do want to, I mean you could have a stack of them at the dump and like I say, some of the landscape stores I am sure would be happy to carry the product. They have to carry a product and why not that product as opposed to somebody else's? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Well ironically, some of our landscapers are paying wholesale prices from us and then turning around and charging retail prices.... MR. DUNN: That's fine, that's their game and they will continue to do it. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: That's right. MR. DUNN: The other thing I was going to say, as some of you know, I was in the construction business, one other way I kept people happy on the job, I was usually a supervisor in one capacity or another, one of the ways I kept guys happy on the job was I kept a inungo pile, scrap, and most of the guys didn't even know what it was for but at some point in the job, everybody would get a little check. I watched our metal pile, we sell our metal as mixed metal which is the lowest price you can get and again, I mean, if somebody spent an hour a day there with a magnet and a couple of 50 gallon barrels and just took the good stuff and just put it aside and we sold it for its full values because somebody is making a lot of money on that. I mean if you go there on 2016 Budget Hearings page 9 November 4, 2015 any weekend towards the end of the summer and see how many aluminum chairs we end up selling for mixed metal, it's just, my grandfather told me something very early, watch your nickels kids. They add up. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: You are right. MR. DUNN: And I know, if it was $5,000 here and $8,000 here, well, maybe you would have more money for asphalt. Just a point. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: I just want to quickly let everyone know about the fund balance discussion we had today, I know it has been reported. Basically the current budget does not include any changes, the proposed tax rate of 1.3% which was part of the preliminary budget, is still intact. What we,did was discuss the fund balance, although it is still very healthy, when you see trends, when balances start to get reduced from year to year, you need to discuss it to see if there's some action that needs to be taken to counteract that. You are all aware of$250,000 we pulled out of the fund balance this year to cover asphalting, there was a discussion as to whether we should restore that in next year's budget. If we were to restore that money, it would result in a tax increase of.86 % added to the 1.3, so it would be a total overall tax increase of 2.16%. if we were to add $500,000 which is $250,000 plus a reasonable cushion, it would have an impact on the tax rate of adding 1.71% which would have an overall tax increase of 3.01. Remember those are in the context of the 1.3% that is being proposed. We could add the fund, instead of directly to highway, we could add it into the general fund wholetown because that's a larger assessment picture, that's a larger assessed value than the highway department, the impacts would be a little bit less. Adding $500,000 would increase the tax rate about 1.63% with an overall tax rate of about 2.93%. Just to put it in perspective to people, if we added as much as a $1,000,000 to the general fund, that would result in an overall tax increase of 4.56%. And I am going to repeat what I said today, nobody is proposing adding $1,000,000 back to the budget and raising taxes 4.56%. I am just trying to illustrate what the impacts are when we manage the fund balance. The way the property tax cap works is it doesn't just calculate what the increase of the tax rate is for the town portion but rather the performance of other taxes that are located on the tax bills. One of the lines is called what people probably see as Article 7 line, it says Article 7 RBTL, something along those lines. That is the amount of money that gets refunded to taxpayers each year that are successful in reducing their assessments. It gets reimbursed directly from Suffolk County, then Suffolk County collects that money back in that next tax cycle. Basically they keep themselves whole by paying the money out now, then taking it back later as part of that tax line. There was a substantial increase last year because of a unique settlement, that number has gone down quite a bit this year, something like $1.3 million plus. Theoretically that gives the town the ability to spend up to $1.3 million for general fund purposes and still come in compliant with the tax cap. Again, no one is suggesting that we spend $1.3 million but it does provide room in the cap and the Town Board has to think about if we have a fund balance that we are not restoring and then we have to think about consequences down the road what might happen. We might find ourselves in a situation where the fund balance is so tight, we can't appropriate any over to a new budget, in which case we would have to pierce the cap in a future year. if you pierce the cap, you have concerns about next year is the third year of a tax credit rebate through New York State that would possibly jeopardize the rebate that isdue property owners, if towns comply with the cap. The consequences of adding to the tax rate right now 2016 Budget Hearings page 10 November 4, 2015 particularly when they are nominal amounts would be far less at cost to the homeowners then were we to let the tax cap get pierced and people lose that credit. I am not saying we have to pierce the cap, I am just saying it's something we need to keep an eye on. The fund balance is very important to the town and we have to think about making sure that we either maintain it at its very healthy, current level or at least making it grow a little bit back to previous levels. There was something else I wanted to say, like I said, the balance itself right now is very healthy but we want to consider future impacts. MR. DUNN: Inaudible. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Well, because we have so much room and still comply with the cap this year, we might want to consider making adjustments now to have the money in there to make up for a year where we probably don't have as much room. The one thing I would say is a lot of these weren't factored in the budget. I sit down and do the budget. I collect all the budget requests from the department heads in July, they are generally using information they have up until the end of the second quarter, how much money they spent through the 30t11 of June, maybe a little bit later. I sit down, I take those budgets the end of July, I sit down with the department heads each in August, so in some instances, department heads simply are just unaware yet of how much they are going to need as they move later in the year. we try to predict as best we can but because we weren't discussing the shortage in asphalt, that came to me in October, I wasn't able to account for it in the budget. I take the budget that is submitted by the department head and assume that includes all factors. In this instance, there were unique storm related costs that needed to be accounted for. However, that is a discussion the board is going to have. And if anybody has questions about it or simply doesn't understand it because I know when you talk about tax cap, you tend to lase a lot of people. I have been studying it for five years now and I still have a lot of uncertainty in understanding every aspect of it. COUNCILWOMAN DOHERTY: And I just want to note, you mentioned before, you mentioned that we have to make a decision by the 17`h. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Yes, we have until the 17th which is when we were scheduled to adopt the budget. COUNCILMAN DINIZIO: If you are talking about pay me now, pay me later. You listen to what Peter said, you know we have roads that existed, we need to continue to have exist... MR. DUNN: Inaudible. COUNCILMAN DINIZIO: Right. Exactly. MR. DUNN: Inaudible. COUNCILMAN DINIZIO: It goes. down the line, it's everything. You lower the amount of money you have available to make up a budget next year, then you know you end up having to borrow, you end up having to do all of the things that we try to avoid. 2016 Budget Hearings page 11 November 4, 2015 MR. DUNN: Inaudible. COUNCILMAN GHOSIO: As I said this morning at the work session, sometimes when you have to deal with these fiscal realities, particularly in business, you may not be happy about it but it's the responsible thing to do and in this particular case, I don't think we necessarily are happy about it but the responsible thing to do is to plan and that's what part of this is all about. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: And again, the budget that we proposed, with the current proposal, the preliminary budget with the 1.3% still leaves a very healthy fund balance. We are not suggesting the fund balance has reached a crisis but when these opportunities present themselves and there's again, unique circumstances, unique costs, you might want to at least, the responsible thing to do is look at those circumstances. And again, when you are producing a budget in August, using receipts through the end of June, you don't have, you know, you develop a better understanding of those costs as you get later in the season, when the superintendent gets out and starts doing a lot of the asphalting. And that's why he came to us recently, had to make the adjustment. Anybody have any other comments on the budget? =This hearing was recessed until November 17, 2015 at 4:30 PM Lynda M. Rudder Deputy Town Clerk c;7 STATE OF NEW YORK) SS: COUNTY OF SUFFOLK) ELIZABETH A. NEVILLE, Town Clerk of the Town of Southold, New York being duly sworn, says that on the 26th day of October , 2015, she affixed a notice of which the annexed printed notice is a true copy, in a proper and substantial manner, in a most public place in the Town of Southold, Suffolk County, New York, to wit: Town Clerk's Bulletin Board, 53095 Main Road, Southold, New York. 2016 Preliminary Budget Hearings rittiati O. null& lizabeth A. Neville outhold Town Clerk Sworn before me this 26th day of October , 2015. Notary Public LYNDA Notary Public, State of NeRw York No.01RU6020932 CommissionQualified Expires March 8.20/1