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Critics take aim at ‘ugly’ county budget

By Melanie Lekocevic

CATSKILL — With county taxes slated to rise substantially in 2009, taxpayers and organizations attended last night’s budget hearing at Catskill High School. But while one group asked the county to take less, the other wants it to give more.

Residents are riled that according to the tentative budget, which won’t be voted on for another couple of weeks, taxes are scheduled to go up by 11 percent next year. But local organizations which receive county funding would get hit with a cut, and they want to keep the county’s contributions to their programs the same as last year.

But according to Interim County Administrator Dan Frank, the numbers are not good this year. In fact, he said, it’s a downright “ugly” budget.

“The biggest problem is that revenues are relatively flat, funding from outside sources, like the state, are in jeopardy, and only 18 percent of the county’s budget is raised by taxes,” Frank said. “So if we have a budget that is roughly $100 million and there is a $1 million hit, that’s a 5.5 percent tax levy increase.”

He added that department heads have made significant cuts in their spending, and some even have proposed 2009 budgets that are lower than 2008. The biggest increase is related to employees — their health insurance costs, benefits and wages.

There is one potential bright spot, however. The county is proposing a switch in health insurance plans for county employees, but that is something the labor unions would have to agree to. If they do, that would save the county about $1 million, and would cut the tax hike in half.

According to Wayne Speenburgh, chairman of the Greene County Legislature, the county won’t vote on the proposed budget until that issue is cleared up with the unions. “The schedule calls for us to adopt the tentative budget by Dec. 5. However, we do have the option to extend that given the issue with our labor union. We want to review the health insurance policy with them first, and we expect to do that next week.”

But some taxpayers say that’s not good enough. Resident Joann Piazzi said that some towns have already switched health plans to save on expenses, and the county should have already done so. “The towns of Greenville and New Baltimore saw which way this was going and already made the switch. I want to know why the county hasn’t done the same thing,” Piazzi said. “When the current labor contract was negotiated, the legislature should have taken health care into consideration.”

But leaders of local organizations have another problem - they want the county to continue funding their groups at the same level as last year, and to do away with the proposed budget cuts for 2009.

Like the Greene County Libraries Association, which comprises a tiny portion of the overall budget, but could be impacted by their tentative cuts. “We are a very small portion of the budget. This year, we are seeing our libraries used more and more, mirroring a trend nationwide where people are using the free resources at their local libraries,” said Linda Deubert. “Most of our libraries’ budgets are cut to the bone, so this little bit of money means a great deal to us.”

Other groups had similar messages. “We are facing the state cuts that everyone is facing,” said Kay Stamer, executive director of the Greene County Council on the Arts. “But every dollar we get goes right back into the community.”

New Baltimore Town Supervisor David Louis had a different message. Long a strong foe of the current system of college chargebacks — fees towns pay for each student who attends a community college other than Columbia-Greene Community College — he again asked the county to phase out the existing system over a number of years by switching those expenses to the county instead.

“Because some towns have a higher proportion of students attending out-of-county community colleges, they are unfairly charged those expenses instead of it being shared equally across the county,” Louis said. “Other client-based services are paid based on property assessments, and this should be calculated the same way.”

Greene County Legislator Forest Cotten had his own message to his fellow legislators.

“Essentially, the Greene County budget has been balanced by borrowing from the General Fund for about 10 years, which is akin to balancing your household budget by hitting the savings account every month - someday, your savings will go dry,” Cotten said. “That’s what the county faces. To his credit, Dan Frank has worked with his department heads and come up with about $2 million in reductions that have been applied to bring the current 2008 deficit of $5 million down to $3 million for 2009. While this is a good first step and long overdue, within the next two years something must be done or we may not have a General Fund balance to draw from.”

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