Niskayuna puts out tentative budget

Employee benefits, new hires add to overhead costs

The town of Niskayuna released a tentative budget of about $ 16 million, but there were some challenges putting it together, town Super visor Yasmine Syed said during a budget workshop last week.

Just under $ 12 million was put toward the general f und and about $ 4 million went toward the highway f und appropriations.

Syed said this year the town saw some rising overhead costs and f lat or decreased revenue. She said one of the key expenses was salaries.

“This was a challenging budget to put together. One of the reasons it was so challenging was coupled with our contractually obligated salar y increases, which were a lot. We had to add new positions to comply with state mandates.”

The state’s new discover y laws have affected police investigations, so the town hired two part- time employees to take on the workload brought on by the new mandates. The positions themselves were not mandated by the state.

The next biggest expenditure is employee benefits, which totaled $ 3.3 million from general f und appropriations and $ 850,000 from highway appropriations. Syed said this is an anticipated 15 percent increase from the previous year.

At one point, Syed said, she thought it could be 20 percent, and now she hopes it ’s not going to be as high as 15 percent.

She adds that this percentage may f luctuate between now and the final budget.

“That ’s a number that we will be fine- tuning as we go for ward and we’re just going to keep our fingers crossed and shop the market,” Syed said.

“It ’s sig nificant, but it ’s necessar y. Other towns are experiencing this, too. It ’s not Niskay una isolated on this front.”

Mortgage ta x revenue has decreased by $ 20,000, and the town is projecting its sales ta x revenue to be f lat year over year. The anticipated revenue for 2020 is $ 600,000.

Although there were some challenges putting it together, Syed points out there were no cuts to ser vices or personnel and it was under the ta x cap. The next budget workshop will be Thursday.