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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-26-2004 Budget Hearing TOWN OF GROTON –PUBLIC HEARING ON 2005 BUDGET TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2004 AT 7:00 PM THE TOWN HALL, 101 CONGER BOULEVARD Those present: Glenn E. Morey, Supervisor Ellard L. Sovocool, Councilman Donald F. Scheffler, Councilman Sheldon C. Clark, Councilman Richard B. Gamel, Councilman Also present: Rosemarie Tucker, Peg Palmer, Lester Coit, Charlene Rumgay, Kim Pedham, Frank Satterly, Richard Case, Liz Brennan, April Scheffler Supervisor Morey opened the Public Hearing at 7:00PM. Clerk Scheffler read the Notice of Public Hearing as published in the Town’s legal paper, the Groton Independent on October 20, 2004. Supervisor Morey – For all of you in the audience there is a summery of the fiscal budget by fund. Just to let you know a little explanation of what our budget is, the budget designations, the A is also called the general fund, which is basically town wide, includes the entire Town. Section B is part town, which means that it includes everything except the Village of Groton. The DA is town wide, which includes the machinery that the DPW has and the DB is part town, which includes the roads within the rest of the town. The amount to raised by taxes this year in the general fund, part A, is $288,925.00; in part B, part town is $122,442.00; the DA section, town wide, is $573,204.00; and the DB section, the highway fund part town is $227,988.00, which brings the total of the amount to be raised by taxes to $1,212,559.00. That’s an increase from last year’s taxable raise is $1,087,980. However the assessment that might be a budget increase of 11% but the actual assessment increased 13.5% throughout the Town so we’re much below the assessment value increase. That equates to, during the general fund, if you add both funds up in the DA and A comes to $862,129.00 and divide that by the assessed value for the whole Town, it comes to, in the A section $4.652 per thousand. In the B, which is the part town, you add the total of B’s and divide that with the assessment value of the part town, it becomes $2.85, which is a decrease from last year’s tax rate per thousand of $7.50. Some of the reasons that we have come up is there’s a delay in the retirement fund of $40,000 to $60,000 February st 1. In fact, the Town Board and April just were handed an explanation of what was going to happen then. Insurance, in all probability is going to be going up 10%. That was a good estimate and a very conservative estimate. The health insurance is going to be going up 10%. There is some bridge repairs this year that we didn’t anticipate that we have to do. We’re replacing two trucks, a 1968 and 1974 Brockway trucks that we’ll have to outfit for this year. We’ll be able to maintain the seven miles of road, as we usually do, from asphalt and stone and oil. The fuel oil is up and our best estimate is that it’s still going to be going up. We’ll be Public Hearing on Budget Page 2 October 26, 2004 replacing the 15-year old telephone system And the reason that we’ll be doing that is that when we reviewed the emergency preparedness policy for the Town we found out that if the electricity were to go off in this building, there would be no phone system and since this is a main center for emergency preparedness we had to make sure that we are going to have a good phone system. We’re also going to upgrade the Internet communication system here at the Town Hall. It appears that every report that we do to Albany is now through the on-line Internet so we have to be prepared for doing that and it doesn’t appear that our existing system is reliable enough for that situation. Any comments from the Board? Any additions? If not, I’d like to invite some people up. If you’d rather come up and talk to us, we’d be more than happy to listen. Frank Satterly – I have a question. I’m not opposed to a new phone system at all. I think that if it’s outdated it ought to be replaced. But you said it didn’t work if the power went out. Didn’t you just hook on to a new emergency system with the Village? Supervisor Morey – Yeah, we did. The thing is the phone system is completely outdated. Frank Satterly – But the justification was that if the power went out the phones wouldn’t work. I know the Village phones work now with the generator and I think it does here too. Supervisor Morey – Frank we made a decision, this was just turned on last Friday, and two weeks ago there was absolutely no telling us when it was going to happen and how we were going to do it. This is outdated of what it is and it came as a request from the justice department and the town clerk’s office. Clerk Scheffler – I think just to clarify that a little bit is that we can’t add any lines to the existing system and with the Internet, my DECALS computer, everyone having faxes and all the things that we have now, we really need more lines. Also, the phones that we have, we’ve been told for many years that there are no parts anymore to fix them. So, that was more of the reason for the request from the departments. Peg Palmer – I have no comments, but this is Don’s. Don has a fire meeting tonight so he asked me to make a couple comments on the budget. The first one is concerning the Board’s salaries. Consider it a mistake and very short sighted that you don’t increase the Board salaries. It’s an incentive for new Board Members who might be interested in running. Community service aside, people value their time and being compensated for their time and energies would encourage people who might be interested to be a little more interested. The second one he commented about was a concern on the contingency fund, to make sure that you have enough in the contingency to cover an emergency that might come up that we don’t know about. Supervisor Morey – Thank you, Peg. Anyone else? Councilman Scheffler – On the Board salaries, I only speak for myself, but I don’t do it for the money. If I did I’d be out of here a long time ago. I think rather than give ourselves a raise, if the public or somebody wants to do a petition and put it on the ballot and have the voters give us a raise, that might work better. That’s my suggestion. Supervisor Morey – Peg, I’ve tried to give them a raise for the last four years and they won’t take it. Public Hearing on Budget Page 3 October 26, 2004 There being no further commentsMOVED , Councilman Sovocool to close the Public Hearing, seconded by Councilman Scheffler, at 7:16 PM. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey Supervisor Morey then opened the Public Hearing on the Fire Protection and Ambulance Service. Lester Coit, Fire Chief – On behalf of the Groton Fire Department, I want to thank the Board for your continued support. Without your help we could not do what we do. Some things that are coming up in the very near future: communication system is being upgraded, hopefully sometime in 2006 or 2007. The paging system, looks like maybe 2005 and that is going to be an expense to the Groton Fire Department of approximately $35,000. That does not include the radios, that’s just pagers to get the fire personnel out. We’ve made some allotments for it, so we’re ahead of the game but next year there may be a little more of an increase next year. Supervisor Morey – Talk about dedication without pay. Thank you very much, Lester. Some of the estimated revenues that Lester submitted to the Town Board, in 2004 the Town Fire Department charged $75,000 and the proposed budget for 2005 is $78,000, which is an increase of 4%. The Town Ambulance went from $69,000 to $72,000 in 2005, which is an increase of 4.4%. Some of the increases responsible for this is increase costs for insurance in both compensation and liability. Workman’s compensation is estimated to increase 10%; increase in training expenses; increased cost of equipment needed to meet OSHA requirements; cost of purchasing two Medtronic 12-Lead Heart Monitors for a cost of $41,000; purchase of new ambulance in 2004; cost to outfit one fire fighter is over $1,800; apparatus repair and maintenance has also increased. The visions for the future for the Fire Department will be the radio upgrade; new paging system and still researching property for the possibility of a new station. Lester Coit – This township and village is one of the last few to have an ambulance that does not charge for its services. That’s because of the help from the Town Board and the Village Board. There being no further commentsMOVED , Councilman Sovocool to close the Public Hearing, seconded by Councilman Scheffler, at 7:19 PM. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey Rosemarie Tucker was present to tell the Town Board about a Community Celebrations grant that the Groton Business Association’s Historic Research Committee is applying for and ask that the Town be in support of this. The grant money would be used for the celebration connected with the 2005 Groton Business Association’s Recognition Award, which will be awarded to Welthea Marsh. Consensus of the Board was that they would be in support of the grant application and Supervisor Morey would write a letter to go with the application. Public Hearing on Budget Page 4 October 26, 2004 Supervisor Morey – We’ve been talking about the farm fire exemption and we’ve gotten information from the Assessment Department and here’s what they say: Due to a large increase of taxable value overall for the Town of Groton, if the tax levy for the Fire Protection District were to remain the same in 2005 as in 2004, $75,000, the rate could be reduced and the resulting tax burden on, theoretically, on a $100,000 home would still be reduced by $6.01. In fact, the Fire Protection tax levy could be increased by 7% and the resulting tax burden on a $100,000 would still decrease very slightly from the previous year. So, this is a win, win situation for all of us, that the tax levy’s going to go down even if we give the exemption to the agricultural. Councilman Sovocool – What you’re saying is that if we don’t do it, it’s still going down, and if we do do it, it will go down even more? Supervisor Morey – No, it’ll go down more if we don’t do it but it will still go down if we do do it. Councilman Sovocool – Then we might better not do it. Supervisor Morey – Well, that’s true, but it’s going to go down either way. Councilman Sovocool – What way is it going down more? Supervisor Morey – If we don’t do it. Councilman Sovocool – Is that going to make them happy? Supervisor Morey – No. Basically, what a farm is, its tax is based on the size of the farm. There’s no agricultural exemption in it. So, basically what you’re doing is you’re being penalized because you have a lot of land, a few buildings, but a lot of land. Councilman Scheffler – If their land is assessed agricultural everything ought to be agricultural on it then. So, I guess I’m for it. Makes it more fair. But it does throw some burden over on everybody else. Councilman Gamel – I think it’s a huge agricultural area and I think we have to protect that. The taxes on farmland for growing corn and having trees and soybeans is a lot of tax burden for somebody who has 5, 6, 700 acres. One house, one barn and all this land, it’s tough for them to pay the taxes on that. It’s tough for everybody to pay taxes but that’s a lot of fire protection that’s not necessary. Not too many cornfields burn up especially the way it rains around here. I’m for it. Councilman Clark – I’m for it, no question. Supervisor Morey also had a letter from Debbie Teeter from Cooperative Extension in which she expressed the County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board’s support for towns and fire districts to base fire tax on agricultural assessed value rather than full-assessed value. Public Hearing on Budget Page 5 October 26, 2004 RESOLUTION ADOPTING AGRICULTURAL ASSESSMENTS FOR PURPOSES OF CALCULATING BENEFIT ASSESSMENTS OR SPECIAL AD VALOREM LEVIES FOR THE TOWN OF GROTON FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Sovocool Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey WHEREAS, the Town of Groton is committed to preserving agricultural lands for agricultural purposes and the State Legislature has by Section 305 (6), and Section 306 (5) of the Agriculture and Markets Law, authorized the governing bodies of local municipalities which levy taxes for fire protection district purposes to adopt a resolution permitting the use of agricultural assessments rather than full value assessments for the purposes of calculating such levy, and WHEREAS, the Town Board finds that the use of agricultural assessments would be advantageous in helping the farming community maintain its lands as agricultural lands by reducing the fire protection tax for those lands, NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Town Board of the Town of Groton as follows: Section 1. Use of Agricultural assessment on lands within an agricultural district . The assessment determined pursuant to New York Agriculture and Markets Law Section 305 (1) shall be used for purposes of calculating the benefit assessments or special ad valorem levies for the Town of Groton Fire Protection District on agricultural lands within an agricultural district. Section 2. Use of agricultural assessments on lands outside of an agricultural district. The assessment determined pursuant to New York Agriculture and Markets Law Section 306 (1) shall be used for purposes of calculating the benefit assessments or special ad valorem levies for the Town of Groton Fire Protection District on agricultural lands outside an agricultural district. Section 3. Applicability. The foregoing assessment modification shall apply only to agricultural lands that have qualified for the agricultural assessment in accordance with the applicable procedures set forth in Agriculture and Market Law Section 305 (1) and Section 306 (1). Section 4. Effective Date. This resolution shall take effect as of January 1, 2005 and shall be applicable to all assessment rolls prepared for levying of taxes in the Town on and after said date. There being no further business, Councilman Sovocool moved to adjourn, seconded by Councilman Gamel, at 7:31PM. Unanimous. April L. Scheffler Town Clerk