Council approves $42.5M budget
Property tax rates will decline
The Common Council has adopted a $42.5 million budget for the coming year that will result in a slight decrease in property tax rates.
The council, at its meeting Tuesday night, voted 7-2 in favor of the $42,519,568 spending plan. Voting “no” were Minority Leader Deborah Brown, R-Ward 9, and Alderwoman Maryann Mills, D-Ward 7.
The budget calls for city spending in 2018 to be $1,051,784, or 2.54 percent, higher than this year’s $41,467,784.
The property tax levy will remain unchanged for the third year in a row, meaning the city again plans to collect a total of $17,650,940 from property owners.
The budget will use $932,177 of the city’s fund balance to offset expenses.
The budget still must be signed by Mayor Steve Noble. On Wednesday, he praised the council’s vote in favor of the plan, which is largely unchanged from the proposal he put forth earlier this year. The only change is an amendment by the council that moved $10,000 from the budget to a contingency fund. That $10,000 had been earmarked to buy iPads for the council members.
In a prepared statement, Noble said the budget maintains and expands public services and sets aside $1 million in contingency money in preparation for the potential settlement of union contracts and for nonrecurring expenses. He said the plan also makes investments in public safety and provides more capacity for the Building Safety Division to respond to property issues, among other positives.
“I commend the Common Council for sharing our vision for a community that does not fall stagnant to the status quo, but instead one which continues to advance, to innovate and to grow,” Noble said.
Prior to Tuesday’s vote, Mills raised several concerns about the budget, including a plan to use money from the current year’s contingency fund to buy vehicles for the Kingston Police Department. She said the department has used a replacement plan for years to purchase new vehicles, so she was surprised they were not included in the 2018 budget. Mills said she only later learned of the plan to use contingency funds.
“This process was sneaky, and there was no open government or transparency applied here,” Mills said.
Mills also said a new environmental asset manager position in the budget would not oversee all the city’s assets, and she voiced opposition to a planned pay raise for the mayor’s confidential secretary.
She also disagreed with a decision to pay the leaders of certain city commissions, even if part of the funding would be covered by grants.
Brown said she agreed with Mills.
“Just because you have it (contingency money), doesn’t mean you have to spend it,” Brown said. She said the money could have been used to lower the property tax levy.
Some city residents also raised concerns about the budget at Tuesday’s council meeting.
Vince Rua, who criticized the mayor’s proposed spending plan previously, called it a “$1 million deficit budget.” He said he consulted with experts on governmental budgets who he said found Kingston’s fund balance to be “small.” Rua said they also found nearly $600,000 in the budget for new hires, benefits and raises, which he questioned the necessity of.
Rua also said the mayor has projected the city’s fund balance will decrease by the end of 2018 to $4.4 million, almost to the minimum Kingston is required to have on hand. That leaves no wiggle room, he said.
“What this means is that, when we have another deficit in 2019, to stay above the minimum fund balance requirements we can borrow, incur debt or raise property taxes to pay for the new annual costs,” Rua said.
Rua urged the council to reject the budget and send it back to committee for amending. He said if the council eliminated most of the $600,000 in new hires, benefits and raises, it would take less than a 1 percent cut to each city department to balance the budget.
Noble did not respond to a request for a comment about Rua’s criticisms.
Ellen DiFalco, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Common Council last month, said she believes the budget is a flawed document.
“It lacks transparency and, in the near future, we will be faced with layoffs and bankruptcy,” she said.
DiFalco served as confidential secretary to former Mayor Shayne Gallo, who lost to Noble in a 2015 Democratic primary.
In addition to adopting the budget and tax levy, the council on Tuesday also adopted a resolution setting the base proportion ratio for homestead (residential) and nonhomestead (commercial) properties in the city. Homestead property owners will pay 54.1529 percent of the overall tax levy, while nonhomestead properties will pay 45.8471 percent. The result will be a 2018 residential tax rate of $9.95 per $1,000 of assessed property value, down from $10.10 per $1,000. The commercial property tax rate will be $17.36 per $1,000, down from $18.13 per $1,000.
That is unchanged from the mayor’s proposal.
The council also adopted a $5,084,585 sewer budget for 2018 and set the sewer usage rate at $5.92 per unit, a 3-cent increase from the 2017 rate.
Additionally, the council voted 7-2 in favor of a $1.87 million city capital plan for the coming year. Brown and Mills, neither of whom will be om the council next year, voted against that spending.
The money in the capital plan will be used to make purchases of equipment and vehicles for the city, including $450,000 for a fire truck and $400,000 for a truck with a submersible pump for the Department of Public Works.