FEINER PROPOSES 3.4% TAX HIKE FOR 2014, WHILE GIVING HIMSELF AND TOWN CLERK 10% PAY RAISES On the eve of a general election in which he is running unopposed, Town Supervisor Paul Feiner today called for a 3.4% tax hike in 2014 for uincorporated Greenburgh, while hiking his salary and that of the town clerk by 10%. If Mr. Feiner gets his way, his annual salary will increase from $127,618 per year to more than $140,174, while town clerk Judith Beville will see her salary rise from $73,686 to $80,936. Town board members will also get 10% raises. Today’s proposed tax hike means that town taxes for unincorporated Greenburgh residents will have increased since 2007 by 59.67%. In 2007, the combined town tax rate was $120,74 per $1,000 of assessed value; in 2014, the combined tax tax rate will be $192.80. The proposed budget for next year, which state law requires be released by October 30, also calls for modest to substantial increases in town spending almost across the board in virtually every department. Some of the increase in spending is due to higher salaries for employees, commissioners and their assistants; in one instance Mr. Feiner is calling for the creation of a deputy planning commissioner who would be paid a salary of $90,000 per year. However, in order to balance next year’s budget, Mr. Feiner is relying almost entirely on a plan to drain the Town’s fund balance in the amount of $3.4 million from the Town outside villages budget (or B fund) and $1.2 million from the Town entire budget., for a total draw down of $4.6 million. Mr. Feiner includes no money in his budget from the expected sale of the former Frank’s Nursery property, which suggests that, even though the Town has put the property up for auction in December 2013, he does not think the property will be sold in 2014. However, Mr. Feiner appears to be slightly more optimistic about WestHELP. He includes income of $150,000 from the property which was once the largest source of non-tax revenue to the Town, but which Mr. Feiner has kept vacant and deteriorating for the past 25 months. Had Mr. Feiner not proposed to use millions of dollars from the Town’s fund balance to balance the budget, next year’s tax hike would have been well more than 10%. Mr. Feiner’s budget includes no money for the expected cost of having to settle the Fortress Bible lawsuit where damages are estimated to be as high as $8 million, none of which is insured. Nor does his budget include any spending for the cost of revaluation, estimated to cost at least $3 million; also omitted from the budget is any spending to renovate the pools at Anthony Veteran Park, which town consultants estimated two years ago would cost as much as $10 million. Not only is no money budgeted for these expenses, there is likewise no money set aside for them either. Unless the Town can somehow replenish its fund balances, the days of balancing the budget by using fund balance instead of cutting town spending may soon be over. If Mr. Feiner succeeds in using all $3.4 million of the amount he plans to draw next year from the B fund, that fund will have less than $10 million remaining. And if he uses all $1.2 million from the Town entire balance or A fund, that fund will be down to around $4 million. In announcing his budget for 2014, Mr. Feiner took credit for keeping the Town’s total tax levy increase within the state’s mandated “tax cap” of 1.6%. However, as is clear from today’s numbers, the actual tax increase that residents will pay will of course be much greater than that. Today’s announcement that Mr. Feiner expects to use a total of $4.6 million in fund balance to meet next year’s spending obligations is similar to the kind of huge fund balance subsidies Mr. Feiner proposed in 2006 when he tried to keep taxes down in anticipation of the 2007 election. That year to keep tax hikes artificially low, he approved a total fund balance reduction of $6.2 million. However, because he used so much fund balance, the following year, in October 2007, shortly after he defeated Suzanne Berger in the Democratic Primary, Mr. Feiner had proposed a single year tax increase for 2008 of more than 23%, which was one of the largest ever in the Town’s history. The Town has announced that it will hold at least two hearings on the proposed budget. By law, the budget must be adopted by the Town Board by December 20, 2013.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 03:32:30 +0000
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