$2.5 Million plan submitted, tweaked, sent on to October
by Robert Lynch; September 19, 2024
About halfway through a more than three-hour budget meeting Wednesday night, this Enfield Town Board member urged everyone set the budget aside, go home, rest, and revisit its refinement later. That didn’t happen. Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond insisted we were making progress and should maintain the momentum. She implored us to press on. Over my continued objections, we did
Yes, we made progress. But we also paid a price. Patience strained; tempers flared. We blurted out sometimes-hurtful words. Enfield’s oft-applauded “Civility Resolution” took a hit.
But what emerged by our just-before 10 PM adjournment was an almost-finished spending plan for next year. We’d trimmed the tax levy by more than $64,000 and shaved its levy increase by several percentage points from that of a Tentative Budget that Supervisor Redmond, had presented at the meeting’s start. The budget’s not final. The meeting wasn’t pretty. But the financial blueprint for Enfield—and its tax implications—is pretty much set.
Supervisor Redmond’s first offer, her so-called “Tentative Budget,” had been shared with Board members two days earlier. But it was only made public Wednesday.
Redmond’s opening proposal would have increased next year’s tax levy by 8.85 per cent. It would have spent $2.51 Million; $851,521 in the General Fund, $1.66 Million in the Highway Fund, a combined 7.16 per cent spending increase. The budget will require the Town Board to override New York State’s largely-symbolic “tax cap.”
The budget was “on the high side when I got it, and it’s still on the high side,” Redmond said of spending requests and her fiscal starting point as the meeting began. The Supervisor conceded reductions needed to be made. They were.
By meeting’s end, the Town Board had trimmed the projected tax levy increase to a figure just above five per cent. Town Bookkeeper Blixy Taetzsch threw out a potential levy increase of 5.2 per cent. She and Redmond cautioned it was a shaky number and not reliable enough for publication. So take it for what it’s worth. (A firm $64,000 cut would yield a 5.4 per cent levy increase over last year.)
During the meeting, the Board touched on proposed salaries, but only to raise them, not reduce them.
Supervisor Redmond had recommend Highway Department workers and the Highway Superintendent, Barry “Buddy” Rollins, get five per cent raises. The Town Board’s majority doubled that increase to ten per cent. As now proposed, Rollins’ salary would jump from $75,264 to $82,790 next year.
Town Clerk Mary Cornell would also receive a significant raise in pay, her combined Town Clerk’s and Tax Collector’s salary rising 8.84 per cent to $40,000. Redmond defended the increase, saying she wants the Clerk’s salary to approach a “living wage.”
More modest raises await the Supervisor and the Town Board. The Tentative Budget proposes only a three per cent raise for those elected officials. This Councilperson attempted to cut the Supervisor’s and Board members’ raises to two, or maybe, 2.5 per cent. I got no takers.
How Enfield accomplished its attempted—perhaps contrived— frugality Wednesday night was principally to rob the Town’s piggy bank, its so-called “Fund Balance.” The Board drew $125,000 from its accumulated savings in the General Fund Balance, a multi-year surplus account. It left the Highway Fund Balance and Highway reserve accounts untouched.
Bookkeeper Taetzsch calculated that Enfield started the current year with $617,138 in its General Fund Balance. By the end of this December, the number, she predicted, would fall to about $583 thousand.
Given the proposed changes accepted Wednesday night, the fund balance would register $458,242 by the close of 2025, and down to only $368,210 should locked-away reserve accounts be subtracted.
An Enfield Fund Balance Policy, adopted years ago, targets $250,000 as a minimum amount for the General Fund Balance. But that old, hard-number threshold may not have kept pace with inflation. And Wednesday’s action would effectively reduce the General Fund Balance by $158,896, or a full 25.7 per cent over two years.
Highway workers and their Superintendent, Buddy Rollins, got their ten per cent raises through Rollins’ fiscal horse-trading. It’s the second consecutive year that Rollins has bargained for increases. Last year’s pay raises were just five per cent.
When Highway pay was initially proposed to rise again this year by five percent, Taetzsch said the proposed Highway Superintendent’s salary “would probably be average” for small towns like Enfield. So it now may be higher than average.
Trade-offs Rollins and the Town Board made Wednesday to get better Highway pay most notably committed Highway workers to resume mowing Town cemeteries, a task they haven’t done for more than a half-decade. Eliminating the expense of contract cemetery mowing would save Enfield taxpayers $7,500.
Less visible, yet more significant, Rollins also gave up $5,000 increases in each of two accounts; one for equipment expenses, the other for bridge repair. Rollins referenced the Rumsey Hill Road Bridge’s deteriorating condition at one point in the meeting. Yet the bridge’s attention—and its re-inspection—will likely get delayed for at least another year.
In an effort to squeeze a few final drops out of what needed to be budgeted, the Board discovered it had $2,879 left in federal American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funds. And it used that small amount to pay for a new exterior door at the Town Clerk’s Office and the purchase of new flags to replace the fading ones that grace light poles in Enfield Center.
The Town of Enfield holds little control over some costs, however. Health insurance premiums are set to rise 14 per cent next year. Premiums in the State Retirement Program will go up by more than 16 per cent for Highway staff.
Recommended by Redmond and passed through with little discussion, Enfield Planning Board members would for the first time receive a little money for their services. Those planners, in total, would earn $1,800 in “stipends”—purportedly tax-free money—to be divided among them. The Planning Board Secretary, currently the Town Clerk, would for the first time be paid for her duties too, a proposed $1,200.
Blixy Taetzsch, who also keeps books for Newfield and Ulysses, reported that the Planning Board secretary gets paid in Newfield, presumably in Ulysses as well. Planning Board members get stipends in Ulysses, but not in Newfield.
Town Justice Heather Knutsen-King’s salary would rise under the proposed Enfield budget, but not by as much as she had wanted. The Town Board left unchanged the Tentative Budget’s recommended 6.7 per cent raise for the Town Justice and for her clerk. Knutsen-King had asked for $18,000, not $16,000.
To address resident concerns about the Highway Department’s tree-cutting practices, concerns voiced passionately at a special meeting in late-June, the Tentative Budget assigns money to retain an “arborist” to advise Superintendent Rollins on pruning, roadside cutting that critics allege has become too aggressive. Redmond Wednesday called the $500 arborist set-aside “a wild guess.” Several times during the meeting, Rollins, seemingly annoyed by the impending oversight, urged that the arborist line be cut so as to save money.
The Enfield Town Board Wednesday moved quickly to refine the Tentative Budget, a document that frequently gets presented by the Supervisor at one meeting and then chopped up only days or weeks later. Such delay gives Board members time to study the budget’s contents. Not this year; at least not in Enfield.
Sensing a rushed review—and also taking heed of the increasingly-strained emotions—this Councilperson late in the evening proposed that a special meeting take place September 30th, one devoted entirely to making further budget adjustments. Others on the Town Board would have none of it. The motion received no second.
Therefore, expect any last-minute revisions to come only at the Town Board’s regular October 9th session. Changes will likely be few. And it’s likely the Tentative Budget, as altered Wednesday—with its fund balance reduced to keep taxes low—will become Enfield’s Preliminary Budget, one approved rather routinely and then sent on to an October 23rd Public Hearing.
[Expect additional reporting on this story.]
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