General fund spending up 10.35 percent to $8.013 million in supervisor's tentative budget

Supervisor Jim Dougherty’s tentative budget proposal, which will be formally submitted to the Town Board on Tuesday, shows general fund expenditures totaling $8,013,922.79, up 10.35 percent over the adopted 2012 municipal budget total of $7,261,955.

But total proposed spending is $10,438,504.09, up only slightly from the 2012 adopted total of $10,382.663.

The supervisor’s proposal show total general fund revenues for 2013 of only $1,403,877, down 78.74 percent from the 2012 budgeted total of $6,604,543. However, the supervisor’s proposal lists an “appropriated fund balance” of $6,610,045.79, an increase of more than 900 percent over the fund balance of $657,412 budgeted for 2012.

The figure referred to as an “appropriated fund balance” appears to really be the amount that must be raised through taxation as well as through appropriating a balance from the previous year, if necessary.

These numbers are merely “temporary placeholders,” Mr. Dougherty explained Monday, and will change dramatically as the Town Board, including the supervisor, reviews the proposal over the next three weeks, he said.

In announcing that he had submitted his budget proposal to the town clerk on Friday, September 28, Mr. Dougherty said the budget would keep the tax rate within the state’s 2-percent cap on annual property tax increases. He said on Monday, October 1, he was confident “we are going to come out well” despite some fiscal challenges.

The Town Board will spend the next several weeks reviewing the proposal and making revisions if it deems them necessary.

In addition to the general fund figures, the budget proposal shows the following proposed 2013 spending totals for other sections of the budget:

• General fund expenses not including Dering Harbor: $498,814.64, and increase of 1.19 percent over the 2012 budgeted total.

•  Townwide Highway Department costs: $1.101,579.78, down 1.67 percent.

• Highway Department costs outside the Village of Dering Harbor: $605,544.38, down 63.09 percent from the $1.6 million budgeted for 2012. The 2012  budget included a $1.142 million appropriation for a Causeway erosion control project that was funded through grants and is not listed in the 2013 plan.

• Debt service costs of $218,642.50 for 2013, up 9.24 percent.