The Eastwick Press Newspaper

Eastern Rensselaer County's Community Newspaper

Hard Work Holds The Petersburgh Budget To A 6.3% Tax Increase

By

by Alex Brooks
The Petersburgh Town Board has come to agreement on its budget for 2014. Bill Seel and Duane Goodermote had spent a good deal of time over the weekend revising the budget, and the budget they presented would have resulted in a 5% tax levy increase, as requested by the public at the last budget hearing.
[private]Seel said their approach was to take 10% across the board from all contractual budgets but not to cut salaries.
The meeting began with Supervisor Krahforst saying that he could not vote for this budget as presented. He insisted that budget lines for his office and the Town Clerk’s office be restored to what they were last week, because, he said, “We cannot operate the office” with the figures Seel had proposed. “It’s not going to work,” he concluded.
Later in the meeting Dave Miller made a plea for the Highway budget, which he believes has not been allowed to grow enough over the last few years, to keep pace with increasing costs. The highway budget was already, at that point, slated to increase by about $11,000, or about 2.5%, and at his urging some money was restored to the contractual accounts so the highway budget will be increasing by more than 3%.
After accepting restoration of the Town office funding demanded by Krahforst and the Highway funding requested by Miller, and making a few other adjustments, the Board came to agreement. Although no one was able to crunch the numbers on the spot, Seel estimated that the tax levy increase would be about 6.25%
Supervisor Krahforst then made a plea to cut Library funding by 10%, which would take about $5,000 out of the library funding, but no one else on the Board would agree to that. The library’s contractual expense line had already been cut, and the Board felt that was enough.
The meeting was very well attended. Every chair in the room was taken, with more seating being brought in and some standing. The audience seemed pleased with the result and praised the board members for working so hard to deal with this difficult budget situation.[/private]