Dear fellow residents,
On Wednesday, the Board of Trustees approved a Village tax rate that represents an increase of 4.5% over last year. While this is more than we would have liked, it reflects an exceptionally tough fiscal environment. We have been hit hard on both the income and expense sides of our balance sheet.
On the expense side, New York State slammed us with more than $385,000 in mandated increases to our budget for expenses such as extra pension payments to compensate for a depleted state employee pension fund, higher health insurance costs, higher police retirement payments and new MTA taxes. To offset as much of this as we could, the final budget cut existing Village expenses over last year by nearly $300,000, leaving us with expenditures that climbed $90,000 - less than three quarters of one percent over last year.
On the income side, we had to compensate for a drop in non-property tax income because we collected about $175,000 less in sales and mortgage taxes due to the recession.
With higher expenses of $90,000 and lower income of $175,000 (as well as a lowered tax base because of property owners who appealed assessments), we had to plug the gap by raising property taxes 4.5%.
The budget process was difficult. In a village as small as ours, $300,000 in cuts hurts – and we are striving to ensure that roughly the same amount of services will be provided but with a leaner staff and aging equipment. Several vacant positions were left unfilled, yielding strapped departments scrambling to continue to provide services. Police car purchases were deferred, fire department equipment purchases delayed, recreation programs trimmed, and temporary parks workers won’t be hired.
We plan to spend the next six months outlining a strategic plan that will address our long-term financial stability. We will address our depleted reserve fund (our balance is less than $120,000 while neighboring villages have closer to a million), the role of growth in our tax base, the structure of our village services, and further opportunities for restructuring and sharing services.
Your Hastings village government provides the services that keep the village running. Our streets are safe. Garbage and recycling is removed promptly. Roads are paved on a regular schedule, response in storms is vigilant and strong (as we saw recently) and roads are plowed promptly. Our seniors and youth are looked after. We provide funding for the public library and we support our volunteer firemen, who are never more than a couple of minutes away from us in an emergency. These things cost money – but we recognize that household budgets are tight and we will continue to do what we can to run be fiscally responsible and to minimize increases.
As always, thank you for attention, feedback and ideas.
Sincerely,
Peter Swiderski
and the Board of Trustees
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