BUDGET WORKSHOP
City officials host budget workshops for 2019
WATERVLIET, N.Y. >> City officials recently began hosting budget workshops to discuss the preliminary proposed budgets for various city departments.
Last week, city officials hosted a budget workshop to discuss the 2019 proposed budget for the highway department, sanitation department and recreation departments.
“As we move through this process it continues to evolve,” said General Manager Jeremy Smith.
Smith noted that there is a 1.5 percent increase for all CSEA employees in 2019. Smith said that they decided to increase the highway departments overtime amount $1,000 for 2019.
“One of the main reasons is [the supervisor] is the first person called in, so supervisors are coming in for more overtime than the other staff,” explained Smith. “We reduced the other staff’s overtime and increased [the supervisor’s] overtime.”
Smith said that when the highway department supervisor works overtime on paving project that is CHIPS related that the overtime is reimbursed to the city. City officials said they expect to pave less roads in 2019 compared to recent years.
Smith also said officials proposed to increase the overtime amount associated with snow and ice removal and also for road salt. Officials have proposed to increase the overtime for the storms from $20,000 to $25,000 and to increase the road salt from $33,000 to $40,000.
“We had a pretty tough year, a lot of storms, not major storms, but a lot of medium storms that required a lot of overtime this year,”
“As we move through this process it continues to evolve.” — Watervliet General Manager Jeremy Smith
said Smith. “We increased that to be on the safe side because we are exceeding the budget this year. We were very well over the road salt budget, we budgeted $33,000 and expensed $46,000 and the year is not over yet.”
Officials said the major change in the sanitation proposed budget deals with landfill costs. Landfill costs in the 2018 budget was set at $180,000 and is proposed to increase up to $245,000 in 2019.
“If you have been following national news, with everything going on overseas in China, recycling went from us getting [charged] $10 a ton to, originally, they were going to charge us up to $120 a ton,” said Chris Daus, Refuse and Recycling working supervisor. “We met with them and it looks like we worked out a price to be $55 a ton now, so that’s a significant switch within a one year period, so that’s where you’re going to see the larger landfill [costs].
“We’re basing everything on a $60 rate for garbage, we’re having this difficult time with recycling because other countries are not taking it.”
The recreation department’s budget did not see many significant changes, with the proposed budget expected to remain flat from 2018, which around $200,000.
The next budget workshop will take place at 6 p.m. at the Watervliet Senior Center on Oct. 11 and officials will discuss the proposed budget for the police department.