Budget to call for property tax decrease
The proposed spending plan won’t have employee layoffs, Ulster County Executive Mike Hein says
Ulster County Executive Mike Hein said his spending plan for the upcoming year will once again call for a decrease in the property tax levy.
Hein said he expects to release his 2018 tentative budget next week.
Although he wouldn’t reveal any details of his proposed plan, Hein said his spending plan won’t call for employee layoffs and will include new initiatives designed to provide county resident “more services than ever before.
“That doesn’t mean we don’t have much more work left to do, but these kind of real property tax reductions benefit senior citizens on fixed incomes, hard working families and all of our local small business owners,” he said.
Hein, who has billed himself as a reformer, said the reduction in the property tax levy, or the amount to be raised through property
taxes to support county spending, will represent the sixth property tax decrease since 2010, the first year he prepared a county budget.
“It’s only been possible, because in conjunction with the Legislature we have focused on reinventing county government on a regular basis,” Hein said of the tax reductions. “It’s also important to highlight that it’s no accident that this level of fiscal responsibility has paralleled strong economic growth in our community.”
Earlier this month, Hein announced plans to include more than $1 million in his proposed 2018 county budget for substance abuse education and prevention.
He also announced he will include $2.1 million in the county’s capital programs budget — which is separate from the county’s operating budget — for school safety programs. He said, though, that as much as one-half of the proposed $2.1 million could be spent in 2018.
The deadline for Hein to submit his 2018 tentative budget to the Ulster County Legislature is Oct. 6.
The Legislature will review that plan and adopt a final budget on Dec. 6.
In 2017, the county Legislature adopted a $325 million spending plan that decreased spending from the $330 million 2016 by $5 million and the amount to be generated by property taxes by 0.25 percent, to $76.9 million. That budget didn’t call for any employee layoffs, but did offer an early retirement incentive program for some employees and $100,000 in controversial cuts to the county Comptroller’s office.
Comptroller Elliott Auerbach unsuccessfully sued the county, claiming those cuts were in retaliation for what Auerbach claimed were audits he issued on programs important to Hein. Hein rejected that contention, countering that all other elected officials except Auerbach made voluntary cuts to their department budgets.