Not a single public comment at budget hearing
Maybe it was because it was a mid-day meeting in the middle of the week or maybe it was just because Islanders are generally pleased with the preliminary budget the Town Board has drafted.
Whatever the reason, there were no comments from the seven people in the audience at Wednesday’s public budget hearing at Town Hall.
That doesn’t mean the budget with a 3.5 percent tax increase won’t continue to be tweaked between now and November 13. But such changes will come as a result of information Town Board members consider between now and then.
Supervisor Jim Dougherty brought a piece of good news. He had just learned that the town will save about $23,000 it had expected to pay out in pension costs in 2016. Such payments are determined by a formula that includes averaging the value of stock market investments over several years.
When the market crashed in 2008, pension costs went through the roof and have been coming down gradually funds holding the pension money have seen improvements in returns. That’s what accounts for the savings in those costs for the town in 2016.
Councilman Ed Brown noted that payments that have been made over a 15-year period to pay for development of the Bridge Street Park are now complete and the town is about half way through its payments of a bond taken to build the Highway Department barn. Those payments will be complete in 2021, he said.
There could be a number of minor tweaks to various budget items prior to the vote on November 13 to adopt the spending plan for 2016.
What might have been a major bone of contention between the Town Board and Highway Superintendent Jay Card Jr. was undercut with last week’s decision to raise spending on road paving.
Mr. Card had outlined the need for $600,000 to bring all town roads up to speed and was hoping to get $100,000 of that in 2016. It started with an offer from Mr. Dougherty of $30,000, slid up gradually to $65,000 and finally settled at $130,000 that drew praise from Mr. Card.
Not a peep came from Police Chief Jim Read who has known for a few weeks that he wouldn’t get the $31,000 he had requested to equip three police cars with video cameras.
Some Town Board members thought there was no need to buy the cameras on Shelter Island and others thought there eventually would be, but didn’t think the moment was now.
The Water Advisory Committee is scheduled to get the full $37,500 it needs to cover the first year of a three-year study of water quality on Shelter Island.
And the Deer & Tick Committee has expressed thanks to the Town Board for increasing its deer management budget to facilitate a major forward movement in culling the herd.
Raises were generally proposed at 2 percent across the board with a few to be decided prior to adoption of the budget.
Those include payments to Mr. Dougherty’s clerical staff and Mr. Card’s secretary for whom the men had requested slightly larger increases.
Many departments and committees got close to what they had requested. That isn’t to say, in the words of one committee member, that they couldn’t put more money to use if they had it.
But with a number of major town needs addressed, there appeared little to elicit complaints.
