Budget work begins in city
Officials focus on Watervliet’s water and sewer funds
WATERVLIET, N. Y. » City officials have officially started the budget process for next year.
The officials hosted the first budget workshop Thursday night in the senior center.
The budget workshops do not necessarily project final figures since items within the proposed budget can change from now until the final City Council vote later this year.
The first hour- long budget workshop focused on the city’s water and sewer funds. According to city GeneralManager Jeremy Smith as of now the proposed budget would expect to see a 4 percent tax increase in sewer rates and the water rate would remain flat.
During the meeting, Smith explained many different items highlighted within the proposed
sewer and water fund bud- gets, such as a 40 percent increase for the city’s insurance for liability, fire, theft and auto.
“All of our insurances was budgeted low last year, we were over this amount for the year in the general fund as well; the general fund is really taking a hit on this,” said Smith, who oversees the budget workshops and presentations. “We’ve had multiple reasons for our insurance to go up over the past few years. It’s currently at $ 250,000; it was much lower before then and that’s without any claims and we also have a deductible with our claims to keep the premiumlower.”
Smith also explained another significant change with the way the budget is set- up this year, which is related to expenditures from the water and sewer funds.
“In previous years, you would see an expenditure from the water budget or the sewer budget, which was labeled as a transfer to the general fund,” said Smith. “We no longer have a transfer to the general fund. We’ve been working with the state Comptroller’s Office and they find that best practice is to show those expenses in a specific line rather than as a transfer, so those lines are specific to what they’re used for.”
Smith also explained recent payments to the Albany County Sewer District, and he did say that some good news did come out of that budgeted $ 560,000 expense this year.
“That payment continues to increase, but we actually got good news with our newest bill,” said Smith. “Although the rain was very heavy this summer, our second half bill from the county was lower than all the other [ Combined Sewer Overflow] communities. Some of the credit to that is to our green infrastructure project in Port Schuyler, where that water has been infiltrated and has not gone into the system. We were the only community whose numbers went down, so that is a positive.”
City officials will continue to work on the sewer and water budgets and then at the next meeting Oct. 5, Smith will present what they come up with. At the following meeting there will be a public hearing on the water and sewer budgets and then the vote on these budgets will take place.
Officials will also host other budget workshops in the future.