Town Board - Regular Meeting

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All right, let's stop start the meeting, the budget workshop for uh tonight uh with the pledge to the flag to the flag of the United States of America to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with all. So, the budget is pretty much where we were the last time with a couple of changes that I made on it. Um, I listed those changes in the email to everyone. We had already 100,000 out of the reserve the appropriated fund balance that we put in the DA account when we first started this some time ago. I split that between the DA and the DB, 50K in one and 50K in the other. Uh the result of that is that it uh changed the um tax rates in a in the townwide and the outside uh only u lowered it slightly in the um outside rate and then raised it a little bit in the um the townwide. So, the town wine went from

a negative negative uh actually went down 12 cents and with this change it goes up 6 cents on the townwide. In the um outside it went from 74 cents increase to 64 cents. So, it changed it slightly in in two directions um by splitting that up between the two, the the DA and and the DB. Um I was informed that the way we had the water done before we had listed originally uh in the property tax line on the water districts uh you can't charge property tax on the water districts. So on advice I moved that into the unassigned fund balance rather than property tax. So, that's a change that was made. Didn't change anything with the overall budget. It just changed to where that was assigned. There was also a uh an issue with printing. The 2026 fire district wouldn't come out. Uh that's been resolved. Um and I updated all the 2025 budget actuals on the sheet so you can see where we stand today. It's on on those budget sheets where you look at the 2025 actual, you'll see that that's where we are as of the 7th. There's no doubt that more work could be done on this if we had more time. I don't think there's any substantial savings that we can get out of it at this point.

Part of the issue is that we still don't understand what goes into all of these. And even though I updated all of the budget to actuals, um I'm not sure that we're still caught up on stuff that hasn't that came in between summer, the resignations, and now that we're still putting the pieces together on uh things like I know we're behind on a couple of payments that don't show up of course on the budget to actual at this point. So, I think while we've made some big changes and we've cut down certainly the budget to uh a significant portion from where it was, um unfortunately the situation that we've been left in, um in order to stay below the tax cap, we're either going to have to take some more out of the reserve. We're about 97, what 464 over the cap. Uh the alternatives, uh we could go through and maybe find another 500 or a thousand someplace, but that's not going to get us below the tax cap. Um and I've been through this and through this and I'll be quite frank, I'm kind of getting to the point where um we're running out of time. And when we have more time, we can spend more on the next time we do a budget, which I think we'll probably start on right away almost. So, facing us tonight is a decision. If there's any last minute changes that you're seeing that you really want to have on this, the other decision is um we could take another 100,000 out of the reserve funds and stay below the tax cap. Um or we have to file the local law

and file with the New York state that will be exceeding it. So, at this point, it's I'll open it up to discussion. Uh, you're talking you said in the email you're going to move the 10,000 out of uh I took 20 out from Dale's budget out of the one line that was on DB. Yeah. And then you're going to put that in uh that tent of it into your uh

Yeah, there's two there's two things that we need to really look at. I took having having been here the amount of time that I've been and I think that that John will attest to this. We need some more help inside. We had talked about having somebody inside for 10 hours a week at $20 an hour. Uh, I'd like to increase that uh to to 20 hours a week. There are so many things that are falling through the cracks here without somebody else to handle them. I am not going to spend the amount of time in here ongoing that I have. Um, and I think we need somebody to pay attention to a lot of things. We haven't even been able to address the website or the Facebook page. There's a number of issues that I that we really need somebody to attention filing.

The filing system here is non-existent. Um, and that's no reflection on Darlene that was taken over by others and moved into my office.

Uh, and it's a mess. I'm not looking to shred documents. I'm trying to put them in a order where we can find them. The other 10K have moved out of the DA5130.21. Um, we need to invest in a software program either from EBC or from someone else. We'll need to do some research on that. There's a lot of elements in terms of pay, managing vacation, time off, um, and a number of other HR issues that we're just not we're just not suited to handle at this point. Right now, we're using uh, Margaret and second sleource way beyond what we contracted for. And that is way more expensive than trying to get an HR program in here. an HR program run us about 8 to 10,000. Uh they would come in and do training and the one that I sent the information to you on is one element that we could look at. I'm not opposed to looking at others. It would interface with the checking program or the payroll program. It would interface with the new time clock that we'll be putting in. Uh so we can manage all the things that right now are just getting away from us. Uh retirement um retirement payments, health insurance payments, uh union dues, um there's a long list and somehow sick days.

Yeah, you can go right down the list. We're just not managing them well. And I I you know rather than get a full-time accountant in here, I think that taking single source back to what we had we had hired them for. Uh they're way more expensive than getting a software program in here and part-time. We got to back off then. It's it's it's it's getting to be at least the amount of time that uh single source is spending to try to straighten things out here is a is getting to be um untenable in terms of a budget going forward.

Now CHPC they do something with a software program or I mean not that not on that they do things with other stuff and we can look at other

types of software. I'm not We have the one that Margaret has put forward and got a quote on. I'm not ready to sign a deal on that, but I think that to put money in the budget and then spend some time doing some research and find the best solution. I'm all about that. So, um I mean, anybody that's worked and gotten a regular paycheck going back 30 years would see how much vacation time they have, how much whatever, what the deductions are. There's none of that right now. There's no process in place. There's got to be continuity. It's way too loose. Uh and this would answer a lot of questions. It would put structure into some something where there's absolutely no structure now. So,

well, I come up with uh for zero tax increase is going to be a million and a half, which it it's impossible to do that now. That's right. And uh but I think we can get underneath that cap 100,000. Now the water uh legal in the water the 3,000. So that's 39,000. Is that uh where did that go at the end of the year? Where's that going to go?

Well, I think that where it's going to go next year and why we put legal and engineering in there is that we're going to have to hire a rural water consultant. Uh there's no way we can get Okay. And I would expect that's probably going to run 20 to 30,000, you know, at a minimum or about there. We'll look at a couple of groups. Again, I'm not fixated on anybody. We have some names. Uh we'll need to present those and have them come and present to the board.

I'm not going to make the decision by myself, but um we have been struggling. I have been struggling with um Margaret has been struggling with it and I have trying to find a solution. Um, and then part of the extra cost that we're getting with single source as they try to sort this out. Quite frankly, they're still struggling with some of the work that LGS has done for us in the past. They're doing a really good job, but it's again above and beyond what we contracted for them. So, anything we can do to reduce that, I think, is going to be pro because we put in money next year for single source, but we didn't put in what it will cost us if we don't find another one. Oh yeah,

the cutting neck. Now what uh that we put 3,000 or 39,000 in the water last year. Where is that going to go? Is that going to go? Well, it you know, it was taxed last year. It it Yeah, I don't know what what to do with it. That's part of working out with the uh the uh the rural water people to have them help us with this. I don't know. Yeah, water is a funny thing and I just don't know what to do with it. All of it. And yeah, I'm understand it's it's in the I mean we got to work on but it's already in the in the water district,

but it's it's in the budget, you know, and it did get taxed, but it isn't like it's cash. You don't have that money to roll over into the next year. So that 39,000 we put in last year, I mean, where is that going to go at the end of the year? We never It'll just it'll it will probably sit right in water. So we won't need to tax anymore then, right? want want to go in the water reserve fund.

It'll go in the water reserve fund and we may have to use more than what we've got put in for this year. I don't know what it's going to cost us all this point, but I think we already, like I said, we put 39,000 in last year. I mean, we shouldn't if it's going to win the water reserve, it'll be there for legal, right? be there for legal and for and for uh um I think you're going to have two things that you're going to have to have for water. You're going to have to have a rural water consultant and then you're going to have to have some type of engineering work done. So, you're going to have two fees.

So, the engineering wouldn't that be covered under the It'll have to come out of water. Yeah. You know, I I kind of agree with you. the problem. And I'll just I'll plead ignorance here. I'm not sure how much this is going to cost us and what exactly is going to happen with that money if if we don't put more in this coming year. If we don't put it in the budget, you don't have it to use. So that'll be over the two years that'll be we'll be putting $6,000 in each water district for legal. Yeah. I think that's way too high. Okay, here's the problem. So I don't put any in this year.

Mhm. Then I don't have any legal fees for this year. That's how it works. Then where's where's that 39,000 we put in last year? Well, it'll go back. It'll go into a reserve. The water reserve. The water reserve. So, can't that go back into the legal? It doesn't quite work that way. if you don't put it in the budget. And and if you look, you'll see that we took money for each of those water districts out of the unassigned fund balance. So if you look under appropriated fund balance for each of these water districts,

we've already taken money out to try to cover some of those things to offset the the rest of it. I just can't get past the we're putting six grand in and two in each water district. That's just I've talked here other other towns and they they don't put any legal in any water districts. Well, you're going to have some legal help on this thing. I don't know. You we if you want to take it out, we can, but if we get into a bind with it, we don't have any money there. Are they Are the towns have the same disarray that we have with our water districts? Oh, I don't know. I didn't get into that with them. I mean, everybody I talked to, they don't they don't have any legal in their water districts.

It doesn't preclude us from doing something in the next budget year to credit it back either, does it? Yeah. Huh. You can't you can't you can't untax it. That's that's the issue. Yeah, that's what that's what I was looking at. I mean, I mean, you know, Ed, if you're really that's I'll take it out, but if we get into a situation where we don't have it, then I'm not sure what we do with it. And then the uh there's 50,000 in contingency. You said half of that or how much was that you were going to use for legal and that? It all depends how much we go beyond where we are. You know, you can't use the contingency that's in the regular fund for water. Any legal work that's done on the water has to get assigned to the water. Right. Right.

Okay. But then so that would be uh some of that would be used for legal also then that contingency for on the regular budget in case we run over. We put 50 in for uh legal. Um I know that's twice what we pay per month. Um hopefully we don't have to go beyond that, but um I'm hoping there's nothing unforeseen. just the carryover from this year could be impact.

Uh how about are we going to address the the issue with the arbitration? I mean is there going to be a appeal on that if one of them my understanding is that you can't that it's very it's binding arbitration

binding arbitration is my understanding. So when when I I met with Nick yesterday, the the lawyer for uh on this case, um and so that hearing is on is tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. And my understanding is that it's binding arbitration and it should be resolved by the end of the year because I asked how much was this going to go into next year. Um his feeling was that uh the hearing should happen tomorrow that uh it didn't take the judge some time to to decide and then they'll have to be it should be resolved before years end. So it shouldn't roll into the next year. Shouldn't.

So by binding you mean it cannot be appealed. That's my understanding. Well, I don't know. I I was told that they could might be an appeal on it. So, I don't know. My discussion with with lawyers was that highly unlikely that you can't appeal by you you you make an agreement to go into it um and that it's binding. I'm just looking out. I mean, for long as it's final, that's all I'm looking forward to. Well, you and me both.

I want I don't want to spend any more legal. And if it we spend more legal, it's coming out of the highway. I don't know how you do that. That's that's another problem. You You can't just move money around. Something in the highway after the first of the year because the taxpayers should not be paying for this at all. You're argue you're yelling at somebody. Oh, I'm not yelling. I'm just I'm just trying to I agree with you 100%. But you know, the situation is such you and I didn't create it. No. Here we are.

Now, we've put 50 in for legal. I hope we don't exceed it. This thing hopefully ends tomorrow. Now, I've asked as pointedly as you can ask about how far this is going to go and I had a meeting yesterday on it and it sounds to me like it's the end. Now, that doesn't preclude a number of other issues that could happen around this, you know, and those are unforeseen

at this point. I don't think there's ever 100% guarantee on this issue. And I think that, you know, after this, if we want to have an executive session again with with uh legal on this issue, I we probably should. Uh but this is as far as I understand it. Now, we put 50 in there. I don't want to put any more than that in there. Um I think that there's some other ways too that we can cut back next year. I think one of the things, you know, when we got into this ad was to do as much as we could to cut out of the budget. And I'm firmly

Oh, sure. And I'm firmly on board with that. It's just that we're at a point now where I've done about all I can do with it. If you see that there's really some other things. If you want me to take the 3,000 out, want us to take the 3,000 out of water that we put in there, I can do that. If you want to take money out of the reserve funds, and if the board, if John agrees and when we vote on that, we'll take a 100,000 out of the reserve funds and stay before the tax cap. certainly makes life simpler for us. Uh I'm a little concerned about the amount of cash that's left. Um you know, the reserve funds, I think several years ago probably exceeded what be held here, but the activities of the board for the last couple of years have taken it to a point I'm a little concerned that if we need a roof on this building or there's some other major expense that we have to go out and look for money and I certainly don't want to get into that situation. Um, I don't know how much more we can cut back on on the other activities here.

Even if the phones go down, you're looking at 40 or $50,000, right? All right. And it's already a system that's not supported anymore. No. Is that a lot of that would be covered under insurance, wouldn't it? Uh, not on a system that's old. We got It's outdated. It's beyond support. It's not under warranty. It's gone up. Oh, and we called for support on it. They said, what did they say to us? Sorry, you can't do anything.

Sorry, you can't do anything. And yet we're paying $190 some dollars a month for for have the trunk line and have them manage it. So, that's another place we need to look about, can we do something? Can we do it cost effectively and get a newer system? There's a dozen issues like that or more. Now, you said uh the chips are going to be going up this year. How much? Uh well, we we've raised it a little bit, but it's really, you know, from what I understand, it's hard to tell exactly how much you're going to get. So, we we bumped it up a little bit in there.

Presumably, it's going up, but there's no guarantees. They don't tell you until March. And we haven't received that money yet. Well, I still believe we can get underneath that cap, but

well, the only way we're going to get underneath the cap is to take another $100,000 out the reserve. And my personal feelings are I'm more than willing to discuss it with you. My preference is not to take it out because we had a couple of years where the taxes should have gone up and there was some slick bookkeeping going on. And I think that that message should be made clear to the taxpayers that we've minimized it as much as possible. Now, if you find that really objectionable, I'm willing to give

raising taxes at all. Yeah, I I pay taxes, too. Everybody pays taxes, but what we can't be responsible for is irresponsible fiscal behavior that's occurred for the past two years. It's putting us in a major bind here. Oh, yeah. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. So, how about uh we decided what we're going to do legal or we're going to stay with the same firm or I think that we are looking at options that we'll bring before the board.

Yeah. because uh well I know I was talking to councilwoman Leman and she said a lot of them bills that should have been covered underneath the retainer were was not and we were getting charged a lot of money out of there and it's not her it's not their attorney's fault cuz she do the billing but I think uh I come up with something like put a number out there and you know uh include allincclusive whatever. That's all you're going to get for the year. That's what I'm, you know.

Well, the problem is when you run into something like like the the the um the grievance or you run into some other issue, you can't be certain that you don't need we've got a couple things facing us, Ed, with these solar projects. You're going to need some help that you probably can't get out of a local attorney. Yeah. Well, solar. Well, not with that, but the solar company is supposed to pay for supposed to pay for those. Oh, yeah. Everything to do with legal, they got they got to cover that. I understand that. Yeah. But you also need to find an attorney that you can bring in for those kinds of things. Well, yeah, we can still bring in a land use attorney.

There are other times that you may need a good municipal attorney. Now, I'm not saying retainer sibling to look at that. Um, I'm all for changing. I think I've said that several times, right? Uh those are things that we can do ongoing. That isn't going to impact this budget particularly because we haven't made those decisions nor have we changed anything. I think next year when we work on this budget that there are a lot of things that we'll know better because I'm not all knowing on this thing as you can see and I've spent a lot of time on it. It's not an easy issue when you start looking line by line out what's in here.

And quite frankly, I'm the only one doing it at this point. John has come in to help, but nobody else is has is is in here trying to go through line by line, you know. So, I think over the next year, um, we're going to be in a much different place. We'll know exactly what's in the budget and what we can take out. Um, I see your point on the water. Let's take the 3,000 out for the legal. Okay. But there should be, like I said, there should be 3,000. It doesn't stay. You don't Oh, I know it doesn't stay there, but I mean, but if you take it out of the budget, then you don't have it to spend.

There's two different things. Cash and budget. The budget, like I said, where does it go? It goes into cash, but you just can't take that cash and throw it back in. The budget is law. Okay. This is how, okay? And that's how you run the things. You can't just say, "Oh, we didn't take it." To to bring more money in out of out of the the cash that you didn't put in the budget is a pain. You know, it just you don't just say, "Oh, go to the bank and get another 100,000." Well, what I'm already explain what I'm looking at is we put 3,000 each last year and we're going to put another 60 grand in each water. I understand, but we don't have that 60 grand. it goes into the reserve funds and it doesn't it's not in the budget.

I I think part of the thinking is Ed is to try to understand to get our grips around the 14 water districts or whatever that number is and consolidate those funds somehow into a water authority. It shouldn't be this complicated, but that's going to take some legal and some probably some engineering prowess that we don't have within the organization. So, if we have to spend $6,000 per district to save a lot of money down the road, I guess I'm willing to take that risk. But if you take it out, and I understand why you're saying that, and I understand what you're looking for, the issue that I have is then if we go to hire somebody to do this, I don't have any money to do it. I don't care if there's cash in the bank. There's nothing in the budget to fund it. That's how it works. I didn't make the rules.

No, I know that how it work, but I don't understand why. It's a lot of money. I don't know. You're talking 39,000. It's 40. That's $80,000 in two years in water and we, you know, we're going to tax the people for it. That's what I That's what bothers me. Well, it bothers me, but I don't know what else to do about it. I'll take it out. But again, then you're stuck with no reserves, no no funds in the budget to pay for somebody to actually sort water out cuz I don't have the horsepower to do it. And you aren't going to have the horsepower to do it. No, we got to get an extra. John doesn't have time or the horsepower to do it. Okay. It's going to take an expert to come in here and do it. We have a mess.

I agree with that. And if I don't have if we don't, it's not me. If we don't have money in the budget, then we can't hire somebody, you can't just go to the bank and write a check out of the out out of the out of the cash.

So, how much of that res uh contingency are we going to use for legal? You said I hope none. 50%. I hope none. So, we can't cut that down at all either then. Well, the contingency covers a number of things. We cut back the highway budget quite a bit. I hope there's nothing in there. I took that 20k out of the one thing that he asked for and put it towards something else. So, the contingency if we run into something like shortage in and the other thing we did this year too is we split up the salt and in the in the snow removal and stuff. Oh, yeah.

Okay. If we're short in salt, I can use some we can use some of the contingency funds. So the contingency is not just there for for legal. It's there what about bookkeeping? What about if you know if we don't resolve this whole bookkeeping thing and get it done? So he know Yeah. He's got 50,000 in contingency in his highway, right? It's not it's in Yes. It's in It's in what? DB DB. Yeah. But isn't there in there?

It's in there to cover. There's contingency also in the other in this townwide. That's for legal and for other things that we made. I Here's here's part of the issue. Not part here's a lot of the issue. I'm not sure what's in a lot of these where we stand on the budget at year to date. We're still having stuff come in. I don't know what we've done with this budget. We've made these cuts that we're going to be short. Don't know. And the contingency would allow us to cover those without having to try to do something else. The contingency and highway, it's not public. Okay. the contingency in highway uh is for those areas that we may have made a mistake.

Oh yeah. Like for salt you got salt wool things like that. Oh yeah. Because we split it up differently this year. I'm hoping we have enough. We've already seen the trucks go out here in the last couple of days. The last thing we want to do is run out of salt. No, that's for sure. I agree with that. Okay. You want the legal fees to go up. So the contingency is there in case if we find that we can bring these things under control next year, I'm all for it. We can cut back some more and I'm sure there is. I just don't know what to do about it with the knowledge that I have to this point with the information that we've been able to put together with what we've been left with. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, we never we never got told about nothing either.

Well, I know. And there's still a lot that that that we all have that I have to learn. I'm supposed to be putting the budget together. This is the best I could do. Um, so you don't think we can cut any legal down a little more? What if I cut legal down from what? From the 50? Well, 50 plus your what you're going to use in contingency.

Hopefully nothing out of the contingency. Now you said that water or the legal in the water goes into uh oh into the reserve fund. It would that if it wasn't used. Yes. Yeah. Is that the water reserve or water? So what would that be used for then? I mean, well, you see already if you look at at at your cover page, you'll see appropriated fund balance. That's what it's used for.

So, it's going into the fund balance.

It goes in and then comes out and we put it in that line because you can't put property taxes on those. So, in order to to make those water districts work, we have to pull some out and that's where it comes from. Anybody else got anything to say or it's just me and John, so I said my piece, I guess. No, I said John.

I said my piece. I'm willing to discuss with you if you don't want to go to the tax cap and pick another $100,000. I'm not in favor of that, but I'm willing to make that concession to get it get it done. So, where we at with uh you're roughly at three and a half million. Well, we still got a lot of expenses coming in. You know, I don't think we have that much myself personally.

Well, it's kind of like being in the ocean and being thirsty. There's water everywhere, but you can't drink it kind of thing. Those things are earmarked. So, how much do we take out of the Oh, reserve or so far 100,000. You said you 100,000 Which fund would that come out of? Well, it would come out of U DA and DB because that's where we've put it and those are getting thin. Yeah. 150. No, I mean if we took the 100,000

Yeah. would come out of D, it would come out of uh um DA and and DB funds. Oh, okay. Down here. Yeah. So you're talking 250,000. So it' be only 150,000 left. Well, you could take the 100,000. You wouldn't put it certainly in the DAB. You would have to take it and put it like in the uh in the A or B in the general townwide.

Yeah. Would have probably the A probably because it has a little more cash in it town wide, but you're running pretty thin there, too. Well, I don't know. I don't like it, but I don't like it either. I don't like it either. And

it would be, like I said, it'd be impossible. It'd be one and a half million dollars more to get down to no increase at all. Well, that's what they did the last few years. They took out a million a year. And beyond that, I wasn't well, they took money and put it into fire that they shouldn't have, which lowered the fire tax. you find out tomorrow. Uh, I want to make sure this arbitration is going to be final tomorrow or when they're done.

Well, I hope so, too. We can find Well, I want to make sure there's no appeal for anything because there's an appeal. It's not coming out of the taxpayers. You know, it has to. the problem, you know, here here's a question that I put towards the legal at the New York State Association of Towns

and they know chapter and verse when you talk to them and I said and my question was since we have fiscal responsibility of the taxpayers to pay for these things, can we can we defund this legal effort? And the answer was no. So you cannot deny funds unfortunately. I I wish I asked the questions. I went to Lori at the New York Association of Towns and I asked it by block.

So you know you can change funds after uh after the you know he could change the budget after amending the budget after the you know first of the year right. Not really. The budget is the budget but once you make it final it's like There are there are minor changes that you can make and I think you have to go through and I don't know the routine it to be honest with you.

I've always been told there are ways that you can do some things but they are limited and you have to follow very strict rules about how you do it. I can't cite all those uh I don't know all the rules but it's not an easy thing but it can be done. Moving money in between funds is forbidden. Oh yeah. Um increasing the budget after you voted on it and made it is also difficult. Can't do that either. Huh. I've been here four years. I've seen a lot. So

I know. So the lawyer explicitly said that there's no appeal. So that's what he told me. I will ask again that you hire him for professional services. So my I would say then we should go by what he says. I will double check with them again tomorrow and get to get the same answer again if that would make you feel better. I would do that. I mean because they're going to be here. So uh before our meeting tomorrow night I should have an answer. And the other thing is too, I would press to get a bill in 2025 so it doesn't screw up 2026 to I don't know how quick they are with their billing. Yeah, I don't know how we'll handle that, but yeah. I don't know.

They get it in this year's budget. They've been getting paid, so I don't know if they're lately. Well, they they've gotten paid. Yeah, I know. Behind all this I know. We were We've been behind on a lot of things. Yeah, it's been a lot of phone calls. Well, we've had a couple key people out, too, which makes it made it even more difficult. So, how do you feel about the task gap? Do you want to take the 100,000 out or are you willing to or are you going to That's a decision we have to make tonight because tomorrow we have to vote on a local law

and it's going to take three yeses. It can't happen with two and even if you know and we're uncertain that we'll have anybody else. Are you willing to vote for a tax cap? Uh, well, I know we can't get down to zero increase. So, but I don't I don't know if I can or not. Right now, it's a no. But

no, what? I couldn't vote for a tax uh cap or I So then then the alternative is to move $100,000 one or the other. Are we going to vote on it tomorrow? So we got I've we've got to get this budget in by the 20th. And there's a lot of work I have to do on it yet before we get there to I'm just going to tell you, Ed, we have to make up our mind because I can't spend any more time in here. No. Than I am already. And I think last year we voted on the 19th, but I mean it was uh different circumstances. Little different circumstances. So,

and I don't know what structure has to be in exactly to get this in a format to get it to the county. I haven't had time to go through that with them. So, there's some work to be done on us yet. Um, so help help me understand what your questions are so we can get them answered because I'm not sure. Well, just uh the you know, a lot of it is putting more legal in the water. I mean, I know it's got to go into the reserve the reserve fund that what we put in last year. But the way, you know, I told the way I'm looking at it, we're going to we'll be putting $6,000 in H1, 80 grand in two years into the water. And that's it's crazy amount of illegal far as I'm concerned.

Well, it's not just legal. It's I mean anytime you do a a bonafideed engineering study, the cash register starts at about $20,000. So if you're going to have a legitimate company come in here and do analysis. So that 80,000 sounds like a lot of money, but in reality you can eat that up pretty fast. So now that legal 80,000 is that uh in the townwide it would be town or no it' be just in the water distance the water. Yeah. So I don't want uh affecting anybody in the village cuz they have nothing to do with it. That's right.

You know I'd like to see no tax increase. But I'll tell you, there's going to be a tax increase every year regardless of what we do. The expenses are going up astronomically on everything. Retirement, some of the retirement went up 19.5% on us this year. Somewhat up 12.5%. And our revenues are not going up 19 or 12%. Well, that's got to be addressed. I mean, well, you you can find more money and find more revenue. The county does is is struggling. Oh, yeah. For sure.

Okay. We only get a small taste of the of the of the uh sales tax that isn't going to get increased. It's been repeatedly asked over the years. Don't expect any more help from the county. We're on our own. And when you have expenses like salt that have gone in five, six years from 30 something to $67 a ton, you got retirement that every year goes up 10 or 12%. Healthc care doing the same thing for us. Double digits.

Double digits. So even if you took and cut this down every year, you're still going to have to increase the taxes some amount. Unfortunately, we've been left in a situation where it goes up more than I'd like to see it go up by far. But I'll tell you that if they had let it go up a little bit each year, we wouldn't be in this situation. Part of the issue is that by doing what they did with the reserve funds, uh, is that they dropped the tax cap on us. We would have been we would have been fine two years ago.

We're not now. But in order to maintain services here, and those include keeping the roads clear, taking care of everything else in terms of of the highway, taking care of the office here, you'll see it's not staffed heavily. I don't know where you're going to cut. And so, unfortunately, the costs are going to go up every year. The taxes are going to go up a year. And it's a hell of a situation, but I don't know how to get around it. We'll have more time to comb through this thing for more savings, but I don't know that we're going to find enough to keep it at zero tax increase as No. Oh, you're not going to do that? Nobody is. Nobody is.

Well, I mean, I've talked to quite a few land owners and, you know, they don't want they don't want their taxes raised and and everybody complains when somebody with solar comes around and they sign up. Well, oh, I agree. Can you blame him? No. So, no, I can't. I had people going to have to change their g have to change their uh attitudes or something on some of this stuff because, you know, it's unfortunate, but you're right. There isn't any other

Yeah, we're going to be faced with those decisions. You know, we've got two We've got one solar project coming up. The other's already done with the with the Hemlock Ridge. there's not much we can do about that or and I know that you're saying people don't want don't want solar but at the same time farmers are looking at what they can get out of their land and farm and uh um somebody comes and offer them that kind of money I puts them in a hell of a situation I was with you on that meeting out there I hear you but unless I'm not in favor of solar I mean it's

I know you're not just waste a lot of land but uh Uh, you know, these companies throw money. Like I said, you know, nobody likes what's going on over in Jennese County, but if they get somebody in here with over 25 megawatts, you're not going to be able to do nothing about it. No, that's right. So, cuz I talked to the Oh, the supervisor over there and he said, you know, well, you talked to them, too. Yeah. Their hands are tied. So, so something's going to have to give. I you know and it's the case all over the state. I don't know whe you know the state is pushing more stuff down in the county. Oh yeah. You know

the federal government has given New York State less and it's going to be than that way for the next few years at least. Uh and that's going to come down and unfortunately it lands right on us. Um but at the end of the day we have to figure out to provide these services and do it the most cost-effective way possible. The water is screwed up. I I would Oh yeah. I wish I knew how to fix it. Yeah. And if we did that, we wouldn't have to hire somebody. But I look at it and struggle with it and I go, I'd have no idea how to fix this thing. Um, you know, and it's going to take somebody with that that does this for a living. Um, Oh, I agree with that for sure.

You know, and it's going to cost us upfront to get it done. And unfortunately, unless it's in the budget, I can't get anybody. We can't get anybody regardless if there's cash in the bank. Well, the issue I guess is uh whether to use another 100,000.

Comes down to that. That's why I put the supervisor's report there. You so you can see what the balances are. I'm not in favor of it, but I'm willing to negotiate and and agree to it from a philosoph philosoph philosophical standpoint. Um, so we got, like I said, we're going to take the vote tomorrow to do it if we're going to do it. I'm So,

we would really like to take the vote tonight. If you want us to do it, let's take a vote tonight because then we got to do the local law tomorrow and then I want to vote on the budget. I want to get this done. So, if you want to do it, if that's what I'll tell you at this point, if that's what takes to get you to say yes, I'll vote for putting 100,000 in and I'll talk to the lawyer tomorrow. We can't vote tomorrow. Let me think on and see what I want to do here. You're running out of time and I'm running out of of time I'm going to in here. You know, Ed, I'm about ready to give a job to somebody else. Quite frankly,

there's so much that's happened here since I walked in that door. People out ill, no organization. Oh, no. I agree. I've spent I've been through this budget a hundred times. I think that you have to make a decision. That's what it's about. And I have emailed you daily. Oh, yeah. Everything that I've done on this, this isn't out of the blue.

It's what we're faced with. And unfortunately, we're, you know, we didn't get started on this until September. We should have started June. That's not your fault. That's not my fault. It's not John's or Linda's fault. Nor is it anybody else's in this room. We can stay below the tax cap by taking another hundred out. So that take it down to 3.4 million all together. Well, I mean uh what you what we think we have total in cash and investments. What we think we have

because the cash I'm uncertain of. I don't know that everything has come in. There's still a lot out there yet. We've got, you know, this month and next See if you don't tomorrow night if we present the local law uh and you decide not to exceed the tax cap, then we don't have a b budget to vote on because then I have to go back and change it to add that money to stay below the tax cap. And I'm willing to do that and I think John has expressed I don't want to speak for empathy. It's willing if we can get this resolved to move it forward. If you add another 100,000, it would probably drop the outside tax rate about another 10 cents.

It' be 40 or 49 cents or no, would be it's currently 64. Yeah. Okay. Total. Yep. It would be 54. 54. That's rough numbers.

These are tough decisions that I I'm not trying to I'm not No, I don't. I'm not trying to push you. It's just I wish I had better answers and a better way to handle this thing. I wish I'd had more time. I wish we'd had more money and we didn't have the the mess that we have here. I wish that the files were such that we could reach into them and see what the hell actually was going on. There's a lot of eye wishes. Well, I don't know.

I think we should go underneath a C pan. Okay. think you should get under the tax cap. At least I'm willing to go on with it. I've stated my my position. I know. I wanted a zero tax, but that's never going to happen. So, at least we get on a tax cap. Who has a zero who hasn't tax? Who who hasn't experienced expenses going on? The way they managed it was by taking so much money out. I mean, that's how they did it. Oh, I know. Slight. We don't I know we we don't have that luxury.

No, I will if if you if you want to take a vote tonight to not exceed tax cap and by moving it, I will move the budget and we will forgo local law number three tomorrow and vote on the budget. and I'll

Well, the way I look at it, it'll give us, you know, we may use that 100,000, but it'll give us another year to and see what we can do. And if we have to do it next year and override it, then I guess we ain't got no choice. But I think I think if we stay below it this year, I think we can pull enough out to stay. And what will happen if we stay just below it is that it will go up a little bit for us next year. That's how it hide kind of works. So if we if we increase taxes but we don't exceed the tax cap, the tax cap will go up slightly, not a lot, but maybe with the work that we do over the next year or the next six months by June when we start this process again,

um we can stay under it again and we cannot hopefully we don't have to increase the taxes anywhere near what we we've done this time. Yeah, I agree with that then. you know, let's let's work on it. Long as we get under it now and then, like you said, we got a year to work on it or whatever. So, that'll be I could live with that. Okay. Well, then I'd like to take a vote on not exceeding the tax cap by taking a 100,000 out of the reserve funds and putting it in the budget in I'll probably split it up between the A and B. I'll take a look and see what makes the um the outside goes down a little bit more. See what I can do with that.

Yeah, it'll be good. Yeah. Okay. And then we'll take it from there. So, if we could have a I'd like to have a motion to resolution to um take a 100,000 out extra out of the reserve budget to stay below the tax cap. Motion two. Motion two, please repeat. A motion to move a 100,000 out of out of the reserve funds into the budget to stay under the tax cap

out of into budget. Okay. Motion to move 100,000 out of the reserve fund and into the budget. into the budget to stay under the tax cap. Okay.

Got it. Okay. Yes. I will move. I will second the motion uh in spite of my reservations in the interest of making the budget work. And I vote yes also.

I think she needs I think she needs to do a roll call. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Um, okay. I'm sorry. Um, hold on one second. Okay. Roll call vote. Ed, yes. John, yes. Jim, yes.

And then the workshop. I don't know. Do we need a motion to close the the meeting on the workshop? Uh I I can't remember now. Me neither. Let's Let's do it anyways just to make sure. Make a motion to close the meeting. I'll second it. If I say no, we have to stay longer. He's staying. I'm out of here. He's had enough.

What did you say? I didn't hear you. Just mumbling. Okay, got it. Oh, yeah. We got that. Are we done? Yeah. Yes. Now, we didn't take a vote on closing the meeting, did we? Going to take a vote on closing the meeting. I vote yes. Yes. Yes. Let's get the hell out of here.