It’s taken them a while to get where they want to be, but Maybrook’s elected officials have pronounced themselves fiscally fit.
“We are watching our spending and we have been watching the last few years,” said Mayor Dennis Leahy who said the village now has a fund balance of $690,000.
That wasn’t always the case. The mayor noted that when he first entered village government 12 years ago, the village was in bad financial shape.
“We used fund balance to get village infrastructure where it was,” Leahy said. “Better times came. We got where we needed to be and here we are today.”
The mayor said the village hasn’t touched the fund balance in four years.
Leahy said the turnaround is evidenced by the State Comptroller’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring System which, in 2019, reported the village to be in a state of moderate fiscal stress with a score of 62.5. (Anything above 6 is regarded as significant fiscal stress.) In 2020, the score had improved to 24.2 which has no designation. In 2021 it had improved to 5.0.
The pronunciation came on a night when the village board officially adopted a budget for fiscal year 2022-23. The $2.8 million spending plan carries a $54,667 increase over the current budget, translating to a 2.5 percent increase in the tax rate for village property owners who live in the Town of Montgomery. For village property owners in the Town of Hamptonburgh, the tax rate would increase half a percent.
By law, any increase above 1.7 percent exceeds the state-mandated tax cap and, for that reason, the village board held two budget-related public hearings on Monday. The first was to override the state’s prescribed tax levy limit, followed by a general public hearing on the budget that was first introduced in March. Neither hearing produced any concerns from the general public.
The newly-adopted spending plan is $2,808,225, with $1,978,625 to be financed by taxes, representing an increase of from the $1,923,958 levied in fiscal year 2021-22. It includes pay increases of 3.5 percent for village employees.
“All employes did an outstanding job running things (during the pandemic),” Leahy said, adding that, for the most part, the business of the village carried on as usual. Village hall was shut down twice for cleaning, he noted, but otherwise remained open, with proper COVID protocols in place, throughout the pandemic.
The tax rate for Maybrook residents living in the Town of Montgomery, the new tax rate is $16.95 per $1,000 of assessed valuation (compared to the current $16.53). The tax rate for Maybrook residents who live within the Town of Hamptonburg, the tax rate will increase to $10.15 (compared to the current $10.09).