Petersburgh’s Preliminary Budget

by Alex Brooks
The Petersburgh Town Board held a budget workshop on October 4 and took a first look at their 2011 budget. Supervisor Peter Schaaphok was there, along with Board Members Amy Manchester and Dick Snyder, but Ray Broadwell and Bill Seel were not present.
Schaaphok began by saying this budget was assembled by putting in the budgetary requests of each of the Town departments as received, so where increases were requested, those increases are included in this preliminary budget.
Schaaphok said he expects some of those increases to be pared down as the budget process moves along. As presented, the preliminary budget showed an increase in the amount to be raised by tax of about $16,000, about 2.6%.
There were increases in the “personal services” line for the Assessor, up $2,500 because a reval is to be started in the upcoming year, in dog control, up $700 as the Dog Officer has been very busy lately, in tax collection, up $300, and in the library budget, up $2,600 or so. The personal services line for the Supervisor was down from $6,000 to $1, as Supervisor Schaaphok is content, at least for this year, to do the job for $1.
Other increases included in this preliminary budget were in the contingency fund, which went from $12,000 to $15,000, and the payment to the Ambulance Squad, which requested $13,000 instead of $10,000, and Programs for the Aging. The Seniors requested that funding be restored to $4,160, which is close to what it was before it was cut down to $2,400 last year. The budget for mowing cemeteries was also increased from $4,200 to $6,000 because only six cemeteries were mowed last year. Schaaphok said it used to be 8 that the Town kept mowed, and there are some other ones that should be cleared every now and then, perhaps on an annual basis. He said he thought Ed Jones has done a very good job on the mowing.
The biggest non-highway increase was that requested by the Planning Board, which asked to increase its contractual expense budget from $500 to $8,000 because it is beginning a rewrite of the subdivision regulations and will need expert advice in the process and also because the events of the past year have demonstrated that the Planning Board will need to be able to engage an attorney sometimes to defend their rulings. In a side note on that topic, Schaaphok said the Planning Board will be rewriting their own regulations with help from attorneys at the Association of Towns, rather than hiring a big planning firm like Clough Harbor or LaBerge, because the latter would likely involve expenditures of tens of thousands of dollars.
The budget for the Highway Department is a more complicated picture. Superintendent of Highways Ray Harrison said towards the beginning of the meeting that he needs two new trucks. He wants to replace a 2000 pickup truck with a new one which can be bought on state contract for $21,000, and he wants to replace the Town’s 1991 dump truck. A new truck comparable to that one would cost about $150,000 fully equipped. Supervisor Schaaphok said he had spoken with bonding attorneys, and he thought it could be bonded over an 8 year period. Money to cover that is included in the preliminary budget.
Harrison also said two bridges need to be replaced this year, on Prosser Hollow and Lewis Hollow roads, which raised that line item by $25,000 over last year.
But with these increased expenses, there were offsetting factors, Schaaphok said the Highway Department is “down a man” by way of explaining why the personal services line was decreased by $17,000. In addition, Harrison said he definitely expects the Town to receive CHIPS money from the State this year, and the preliminary budget showed $75,000 of revenue in that line. So despite some big new expenses in the Highway Department, the cost to the taxpayers may not be up after all.