Remarks by Erin Enouen
350 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 13 of 14
“So now we're at the business recording portion of our meeting. I've submitted the monthly financials to the board digitally. The overview of our larger funds is that general fund took in $1,000. $208,271.31 in the month of September. And our expenditures totaled $159,156.03. In the highway fund, we saw a total income of $140,743.22. And our expenditures were $113,509.13. Every financial report is available to the board. It is also available to the public. So at the top of every single agenda, there is a link to a Google Drive folder that has meeting backup in it for each meeting. So the…”
“I don't have anything to report from the highway. Councilman Nguyen is absent, so he doesn't have a justice court report. So we'll move on to board and committee reports. Pete, do you have anything to report for us?”
“I have one note that March Gallagher called me to let me know that there was a misunderstanding from the report data and there are not short-term rentals that are registered with the county that are operating here. She said it was a little confusing. She understands why the data was interpreted that way, but she did send a correction to the paper and that they try their very best to deny, to check and deny anyone that hasn't registered with the local municipality. And obviously the software program they're getting will make it way easier. But she did want me to make sure that it was clear…”
“Thank you. All right. So it is time for the public comment portion of our meeting. This is the time that we welcome the public to address the board directly. We allow three minutes per person. Time may not be yielded. If this amount of time does not feel like an adequate amount of time, we encourage you to write additional comments and send them to the town clerk so the board may view them. We do read every single comment that comes in. We also ask that you not engage in a debate back and forth with anyone in the audience. When someone has their three minutes of time, it is their three…”
“Yes, I did give an announcement. We're having an issue with the camera, but the audio is functional and is streaming online. Thank you.”
“Yeah, so we're keeping an eye on it. Okay. So is there anyone here who would like to address the board? Okay. Barbara, you're up first. And if you would like your name to be a part of the record, please state your name in the beginning of your comment. Okay.”
“Is there anyone else who'd like to give your hand up?”
“Is there anyone else who would like to address the board?”
“Okay, good evening, everyone. I'm going to call the town of Rochester town board special budget meeting to order. It's Monday, October 5 2026 630pm. If you could all stand for the question. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. We do have a forum tonight. Kate, can you give the roll call? Councilman Coleman. Councilman Svinsa. Supervisor Inouye. I am here. First item on the agenda is the acceptance of the agenda. I will make that motion with the following…”
“Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. Okay, so this is our official presentation of the 2027 tentative budget. Wait, you officially present the budget to the board? Yes, so I have”
“Thank you. Thank you. We will be posting the tentative budget on the E-code 360 and linking that in a news item announcement so everyone knows where it's located. I am going to give a PowerPoint presentation overview. Okay. So what we have here is the 2027 tentative budget, and I would like to review what is going to happen from the filed tentative budget all the way to the preliminary budget, which is the version of the budget that we scheduled the public hearing on. The board has set the date for the preliminary budget public hearing as November 5th, but we do have to officially schedule…”
“So yes, the projections for the 2027 tentative budget include one month of the 12% increase over the 17% increase. Okay. So I have... very accurate budget projections for the premium and HRA expenditures. So it's just that there is 11 months that it's 17% increase and then one month that it's 17% increase plus 12.5% increase. At the end of the year. At the end of the year. And then looking ahead, this is not going to be a flat expenditure, right? So looking ahead to 2028, We're not, there's not relief, basically. This is something that we have to fix through revenue planning because this is…”
“No, we're not paying more. We're just paying more relative than we used to.”
“And I also think that that might actually be fair.”
“I agree with you. I've thought about this a lot because the state does not mandate revals. They strongly, strongly encourage it. The reason why all towns should have as accurate as possible assessed values is because of this very thing. So, you know, if... Marvel town were to go through a townwide reval, we might see it shift again, but we might not is the point. Again, it's, I know that it's difficult to be in a gray area so much, but that's why during this process, we kept saying, we can't tell you what's going to happen to your tax bill because the way these things interact are not in our…”
“I mean, all you have to do is look at the total assessed value.”
“Exactly. You just have to look at that top number, and it's different. So about the tentative budget, Charlotte or Michael, do you have anything, any questions about my presentation?”
“Well, Kate did the printing and the bindering.”
“Right. And like, I am just going to say that there's not a lot of policy agendas that we can have that have a significant impact on our budget other than the budget process. But the federal level policies that we see right now are directly impacting every single resident and every single line item of our budget from health care costs to fuel costs to tariff costs to the cost of every single good that we have. And that is not anything that is under our control. directly as a town board but it is something that i think is really important for us to call out because like this is has not gotten…”
“One bright side is a lot of the tax apportionments that come from the county and the state are based on assessed value. So since we do have the benefit of having a very accurate role that increased the market assessed value. That is something that we might see shift a little bit in terms of our portion of those revenue items. But I didn't want to put that into the budget.”
“OK. So we do have one department here to join us. Jeremy, if you want to go ahead and come up. I'm going to give, because I think it's important for you to know this too, I'm going to give a brief overview of what's in the binder. So we have a cover letter. We have the actual budget, which are these very short pages, because we are adopting our budget to the first decimal point. Then we have the appendices, which is where the meat of the budget are. The appendices include the tax cap form. This will be replaced by a report from Jeremy, but I have the final roll in the summary so you can see…”
“So it's 170 grievances and 158 stipulations and one correction.”
“I do think that's important also to note that those are going to carry over into 2027. So that is a level. We all know how much work goes into litigation. 159. 158. And it says one correction.”
“Do you want me to answer that? It's for a new program program.”
“No, we're using, that's what the 4500 is for. Okay. We're using it right now.”