Town Board approves $9.9 million budget

As expected, the Shelter Island Town Board Friday unanimously approved a $9.9 million 2015 budget requiring $7.7 million to be raised from property taxes.

Overall, that’s 5.9 percent more than had to be raised from property taxes to support the 2014 budget, according to Supervisor Jim Dougherty.

Assessor Al Hammond estimated that owners of property valued at a median $630,000 would be paying $35 more to support that budget than they paid for the current year’s spending plan. That would be $1,590 next year, while it cost $1,555 this year.

High end owners with property valued at $2 million would be paying $112 more than it cost them this year when the tax bite was $4,937. In 2015, it will be $5,049, Mr. Hammond said.

The Town Board’s budget pierces the state 2 percent cap on the tax levy. Mr. Dougherty has been outspoken about what he sees as an impossibility of staying within the cap when expenses such as health care premiums increased 4.5 percent from 2014 to 2015. At the same time, the supervisor pointed out that new town employees pay 20 percent of their health insurance premiums.

There has been general agreement among Town Board members about increasing Mr. Dougherty’s original budget proposal that reflected a 3.5 percent increase in spending.

In most cases, smaller budget requests that the supervisor had cut slightly were restored to what department heads originally requested.

But it was the budget for the Highway Department and Department of Public Works that took the brunt of cuts.

The request from Highway Superintendent and Public Works Commissioner Jay Card Jr. had originally reflected a more than 23 percent increase. But that included creating a fund over a three-year period to address a number of capital projects. Mr. Card and Town Engineer John Cronin argued that would enable them to bring all town property up to snuff so it could then be put on a regular maintenance schedule that would avoid peaks and valleys in budgeting.

It became a philosophical difference between the Town Board that wanted a pay as you go approach to only raising money for immediately needed projects versus the long-term planning approach for which the two men fought.

At the end of the day, the approximately $1.24 million the men hoped to gather over three years was nixed. So was Mr. Card’s attempt to get a salary increase that would put him in line with similarly employed workers in other East End towns.

He produced a listing showing those salaries ranging between $90,00 and $103,500. Under the budget approved, he will get a 2 percent addition to his current $76,500 pay.

Another change the Town Board made was to reduce Mr. Dougherty’s original request to use $370,000 from the fund balance to avoid a larger tax increase. A compromise was reached at taking $315,000 from fund balance accounts.

A smaller, but significant allocation was approved that will enable the town to employ part-time school social worker Jennifer Olsen to work with Island families for 12 hours a month. The aim, according to Marilynn Pysher, who has been coordinator of Communities That Care, is to allow a wider focus on issues that affect families. She predicted that the result would be a savings to both police and courts that answer the call for services after problems have boiled over.

Ms. Pysher put the cost of the 12 hours at $9,648, with $2,000 of that coming from money left in the CTC coffers since that organization is folding.

Mr. Dougherty tried to scale back the spending to allow for nine or 10 hours a month, but the final decision was to accept the CTC money and provide the balance from the town budget.

Ms. Pysher said if the program works as she expects, she would seek contributions in future years to support its continuance after the CTC money was gone.

While the Deer & Tick Committee settled for a budget that would leave deer management at $5,000, Councilman Ed Brown said this week if the committee can come up with a viable plan for culling more deer than in past years, he would ask his fellow Town Board members to try to find more money to support incentives to hunters.

The rest of that committee’s allocation of $112,850, supports the 4-poster program and an educational component that is planned to get under way by May 2015.

The money allocated for deer management essentially represents about 3 percent of the overall budget and pays for butchering the deer so meat can be distributed to various food kitchens.

The final budget will be posted on the town website.