I attended last night’s Orleans County budget hearing hosted by the Orleans County Legislature and Chief Administrative Officer/Budget Officer Chuck Nesbitt. While I do not have the ability to posted the tentative budget online (it is far too extensive to scan and the county has not made it available on their website yet) it is important to talk about, especially in these difficult economic times.
To summarize the budget, the property tax rate will remain at $9.16 per $1,000 of assessed value. That is the same rate as last year, which was the result of a record increase and the second-highest property tax rate in the last 20 years and quite possibly, in Orleans County’s history. Keep in mind that five of the legislators – Chairman Henry Smith, Vice Chairman and Finance Committee Chairman David Callard, Legislator George Bower, Legislator Bill Eick and Legislator Ken Rush – were in office last year when they raised taxes to such record levels.
The county will have appropriations of $70,665,343 for 2009, a $3,271,476 increase from 2008. Revenues are estimated to be $55,730,711, up $2,906,885 from last year. When you factor in the less cash surpluses and allowance for uncollectable taxes, you are left with a total property tax levy of $13,786,732. So while the property tax rate has remained the same, the total tax levy has actually increased, albeit a rather small increase of $76,691.
Click for more.The problem with the budget is the same as last year. While they can say that they didn’t raise taxes this year, they didn’t cut taxes either. They kept taxes at the same rate even though they are spending records amount of money. Yes, they have federal and state mandates to abide by and that is where a good portion of that money goes. But a significant part of that are appropriations that the county can control.
Take health care for example. According to CAO Nesbitt, the health insurance costs for the county are going up $306,000 next year. What is being done to address that? Apparently nothing. The last I knew, there are some county employees (mostly upper-level employees) who do not pay a dime towards their own health insurance. That means we are picking up the tab for them to get full health insurance benefits FREE OF CHARGE for them but rather costly for us.
Granted, we might not be able to save the full $306,000. But I’m sure we could save a very large portion of that were these employees be required to pay part of their health insurance.
Without looking at the whole budget (again, it is rather thick), I’m sure there are other places where you could save the taxpayers money. We do need a better system of taxation that taxes those based on how much they can pay. But until we get such a system, we must deal with what we have.
Families in Orleans County are sacrificing. They are pinching pennnies and just getting by. The unemployment rate in Orleans County is up over six percent and rising. The median household income (as of 2004) is $38,482. People are having to sacrifice and budget month-by-month to get by. So what’s our county doing?
Spending more and turning to us and saying that we owe them $13,786,732.
The county needs to sacrifice a little bit too.
December 9, 2008 at 9:53 pm
“While they can say that they didn’t raise taxes this year, they didn’t cut taxes either.”
The key number is the increase in spending, it is HIGHER than last year. That money has come from taxpayers in the form of raised fees and record sales tax revenue, simply stated it is a tax increase. They can say they didn’t raise taxes but the fact of the matter is that they did, they just didn’t raise the property taxes, even Nesbitt admitted that all of their funding comes from taxpayers whether they be federal, state or local dollars, they are tax dollars.
It is no different than them saying the cut over $3 million from the preliminary budget, sounds like they did a great job but in reality it’s all a smokescreen.
December 9, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Thom,
I agree. You will notice the gap between total appropriations and total revenues is growing and continues to grow. That is not good for our long-term outlook. The more that increases, the more we pay. It’s that simple.
One more thing: Do you remember when Nesbitt said last night that 95 percent of the tax levy is state mandates? According to his own figures, the six state mandates total $13 million. That means $786,732 of the tax levy are things they can control (and that’s without verifying that $13 million is indeed the true amount of state mandates that taxpayers will be covering).
The problem this county will face is that you can’t depend on that sales tax revenue to be there forever, especially during these tough times. So the revenue growth they had from 2008 to 2009 won’t happen all the time.