by Robert Lynch; October 22, 2025
Disagreements erupted, and the vote was not unanimous. But the Enfield Town Board Wednesday night adopted its final 2026 Town Budget following a public hearing where at least one commenter, a candidate for Town office, suggested that Supervisor Stephanie Redmond and Town Councilpersons serve next year without a pay raise.
The adopted $2.67 Million final budget would increase next year’s property tax levy by 6.53 percent. The tax rate, the amount per thousand that property owners pay per their assessments, would rise by 4.76 percent and stand next year at $6.84.
The Enfield budget passed on a four-to-one vote following a sometimes-testy half-hour of discussion among Town Board members. Central to the controversy was Supervisor Stephanie Redmond’s last-minute initiative to transfer an additional $100,000 from accumulated multi-year “Equipment Reserves” into a budget line that Highway Superintendent Barry Rollins could spend at his discretion without Town Board review or consent.
As amended, Rollins discretionary equipment line will now have $375,000 for the superintendent to spend on machinery in 2026. The earlier “Preliminary Budget,” the actual subject of the evening’s Public Hearing, had set the spending line at $275,000. It had been only $140,000 in the initial 2025 Budget, but then climbed upwards during the year.
You’re giving the Highway Superintendent a “blank check,” Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) said of the $375,000 equipment allowance. He noted that Rollins could spend the money without consulting the Town Board, let alone getting its permission. At one emotional moment, the Councilperson maintained that allowing too much money to wash around without Board oversight equated to letting President Trump tear down the East Wing of the White House.
This Councilperson, Lynch, voted against the $100,000 transfer and also against the final 2026 Budget. He cast the lone vote in favor of an amendment, one suggested by a hearing commenter who’s also a candidate in this year’s elections, to have Town Board members forgo their planned three percent 2026 raises in the name of austerity.
“This budget puts things ahead of people,” Lynch insisted, noting that at a prior meeting two weeks earlier, the Board’s majority had declined to increase annual salaries for Town Justice Heather Knutsen-King and her court clerk each by $530, but had no problem supporting a new $165,000 tractor for the Highway Department.
Other Town Board members, led by Redmond, resisted rolling back their own planned raises. Redmond maintained that adequate member pay encourages residents to serve in government and avoids having only persons of privilege running for office.
The pay-critical hearing commenter, Independent Councilperson candidate Robert Tuskey, countered that complaining board members should consider the taxpayers as well as themselves; consider those who must next year bear the nearly five percent increase in the tax rate. It’s getting “harder for them to put food in the refrigerator and on the table,” Tuskey said of taxpayers.
At one tense point in the hearing, Councilperson Melissa Millspaugh—not a candidate in this year’s elections—described Tuskey’s remark as an “incredibly privileged thing to say.” Tuskey pushed back, stating he resented the implications of Millspaugh’s remark.
Robert Tuskey and Rosie Carpenter are each challenging incumbent Councilpersons Jude Lemke and Cassandra Hinkle in this year’s Enfield Councilperson races. Carpenter also attended the hearing, but limited her comments to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Defending the last-minute transfer of Highway reserve funds, Supervisor Redmond argued that the fattened equipment account would enable Rollins greater flexibility should he suddenly locate machinery at auction and require cash in a hurry. This Councilperson, Lynch, countered that Rollins could—and should—return to the Town Board, quickly request a special meeting, and then secure the money with full authorization
Because the $100,000 Redmond requested for equipment is only a budget transfer—and not new money—the Board’s action had no immediate impact on the tax levy or the tax rate.
“4.76 percent; that’s quite a bit,” another hearing commenter, Marcus Gingerich, said of the proposed, and later adopted, tax rate increase. Gingerich had spoken just one night earlier on Enfield’s Fire District expenses as the District’s Board of Fire Commissioners took its own testimony—and later adopted—a much-smaller, yet still increasing, $638,631 Fire District Budget.
To counter Gingerich, Redmond stated that reducing “anything else is going to be a cut to services.”
To justify the higher budget, Supervisor Redmond leaned heavily on the fact that premiums for Town-Paid health insurance to Highway Department employees will rise by a full 18 percent next year. But in truth, the budget impacts come from many sources, not the least of which is planned capital spending.
At multiple times during the budget process, the Town Board’s majority has endorsed Rollins’ plans to purchase a new mower tractor for Highway use, one set to replace a tractor procured in 2004 or 2005. The new tractor is priced at $165,000.
This Councilperson, Lynch conceded he’d originally planned to vote for the budget, but could not do so now given both the newly-advanced $100,000 infusion of reserved equipment funds and also the budget’s increasingly-apparent “implicit” endorsement of the new tractor’s procurement.
The Highway Department may view a 2004 tractor as “junk,” this Councilperson observed. “But for some farmers in Enfield, a 2004 tractor is seen as just nicely broken-in.”
This Councilperson repeatedly in recent months has encouraged Rollins to locate a used replacement tractor. Rollins found one last July, but his attempts to purchase it fell through. The fiasco eroded relations between the Highway Superintendent and this Councilperson.
Matters not mentioned at either the Public Hearing or in Board comment Wednesday, yet still significant within Town finances, were that for the first time the 2026 Enfield Town Budget has set aside funds for a quarter-time administrative assistant at the Highway Department. From a fiscal perspective, the budget also draws down the projected available General Fund Balance—the Town’s savings account—to no more than $27,183 above the $250,000 threshold that past Town Boards, through policy, have insisted be reserved for emergencies.
To contain the 2026 tax levy, Supervisor Redmond had recommended, and the Board’s majority later agreed, to tap $182,500 from the existing General Fund Balance to cover operations for the year ahead. Should a similar amount be syphoned off one year from now in the 2027 budget, the available surplus beyond the established policy limit could be more than depleted.
Expected further reporting on this story.
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