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2005-11-03 SP MTG49 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 11/3/2005 MTG#49 60 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING MTG. #49 NOVEMBER 3, 2005 RES. 505-507 7:00 p.m. TOWN BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT SUPERVISOR DANIEL STEC COUNCILMAN THEODORE TURNER COUNCILMAN JOHN STROUGH COUNCILMAN TIM BREWER TOWN BOARD MEMBER ABSENT COUNCILMAN ROGER BOOR TOWN OFFICIALS Director of Parks and Recreation Steve Lovering Town Assessor Helen Otte Executive Director of Community Development Marilyn Ryba Superintendent of Pine View Cemetery Mike Genier Deputy Highway Superintendent Mike Travis Director of IT Dept. Bob Keenan Deputy Wastewater Supt. Mike Shaw Water Superintendent Bruce Ostrander Director of Building and Codes Chuck Rice Budget Office Jennifer Switzer PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE LED BY SUPERVISOR DANIEL STEC PUBLIC HEARING 2006 TOWN BUDGET NOTICE SHOWN Supervisor Stec-We have one agenda item for the regular session tonight and that is the th Public Hearing on the 2006 Town Budget. At our October 17 Regular Town Board Meeting the Town Board adopted a preliminary budget and set the public hearing for tonight to conduct the public on the 2006 budget. So, with that I will Open the Public Hearing and I will turn the floor over to our Budget Officer Jennifer Switzer who has a thirteen slide presentation to cover the highlights and then after that we will solicit input from any members of the public and perhaps explanations from department heads that are present. With that Jennifer the floor is yours. Budget Officer Jennifer Switzer-(Exhibit A Town of Queensbury 2006 Preliminary Budget Public Hearing handout) Thank you Dan and Thank you to all of the Department Managers and the Town Board for again coming up with what I think all of us can agree on is a tight budget again this year. The budget process started in July and tonight’s preliminary budget is a combination of the meetings and all the hard work that we have put in since that time. (page 1) Over all this year the Town Budget all of the funds all the special districts together you will see a six percent increase which translates to an additional one million three hundred and seventy nine thousand six hundred and fifty four dollars of spending. (page 2) The next slide demonstrates those different cost areas and where you will see increases or decreases. What is of note here is if you look at the personnel increase of a hundred and seventy seven thousand one twenty seven and the employee benefits of five hundred and thirty three thousand one hundred and fifty three dollars this is about fifty one and a half percent of the total one million three hundred and seventy nine thousand six hundred and fifty four increase. These are mostly costs that are contractual in nature or out of the towns hands. The employee benefits some of the biggest being the health insurance and the state retirement system. Five hundred and fifty seven thousand five hundred and eighty is the contractual or a lot of the basic operating costs that the department used their products and their services and we can all pick up the newspaper and read about the utility costs and the price of gasoline going up SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 11/3/2005 MTG#49 61 and of this five hundred and fifty seven thousand dollars about a hundred and thirty one thousand of that is our increases in electricity, heating fuel, and gasoline. So, again some of the increases that you see here tonight are costs that are out of the control of the department managers as well as the Town Board hands. Supervisor Stec-In that electric increase today you mentioned the percent increases that we saw I could not remember if that was general fund or total, I think it was total. Budget Officer Switzer-Total Supervisor Stec-Could you the people the three areas? Budget Officer Switzer-Electricity a thirteen percent increase, heating fuel a twenty eight percent increase and gasoline a fifteen percent increase. Councilman Brewer-How much was the electricity increase? Budget Officer Switzer-Electricity was thirteen percent and the funds hit hardest by this area the general fund and specifically water with the use of their electricity and their gasoline. (page 3) This next slide is the general Town Wide operations and you can see that the general fund itself only has a three point one percent increase in over all you are looking at a three point nine percent increase. Actually the solid waste fund or the landfill decreased four point seven percent. (page 4) This next slide shows our Special Districts and these increases two, in specific, are quite large and that is the fire and ems or emergency services and the wastewater districts. I will just mention those right now and in the next few slides we will get into some details about each one of those. (page 5) This gives you a good idea of all the budgeted funds it goes back to the twenty four million dollars that we are projecting our budget will be for 2006. This gives you a good idea of where we were last year, where we were last year where we will project we will be in 2006. Yes, we are at one point three million dollars but the town spending is still less than what we budgeted for in 2004. Again this is all of the Town funds including the special districts. (page 6) This next slide slows all of the increases in all of the different funds not all of the funds are mentioned in the slide again because landfill did have a decrease. Again of note are the increases in the general fund, fire and ems and wastewater. (page 7) This next slide like the previous slide shows just the general fund, general fund appropriations. Like all the other funds over all spending will be up in the town in 2006 from 2005 but is it still less than 2004. (page 8) This gives you an idea one of the items that I mentioned earlier about payroll and employee benefits. Of the two hundred and ninety one thousand four hundred and fifty dollar general fund increase that we see, personnel increases or the personnel and employee benefits were actually three hundred and eighty three thousand three hundred and forty eight dollars of that. So, we want everyone to know that without these increases the general fund would actually be down. In looking at the payroll increases something that does not happen every year but was something that we wanted to point out is one of the slices in here the blue slices is up fifty thousand dollars of what we are calling recreation minimum wage. The minimum wage went from five dollars and eighty five cents and in 2006 it will go up to six dollars and seventy five cents. Last year when we did the 2005 budget the government had not come out with the new minimum wages so we actually budgeted for only five dollars and eighty five cents of minimum wage rates. So, we are looking at a dollar ninety increase. (page 9) Now we are getting to the fire and ems which I had mentioned before. The increase the pretty dramatic increase that you will see this year and as you can see again, just like all of the funds and general fund the spending in 2006 what we are projecting will still be less than what it was in 2004. But, it is taking quite a jump. Why is it taking quite a jump? There are a couple of reasons for this, last year when we established the budget we had not completed the contracts with the fire and ems and as a result there was money added back into the budgets into their contracts which had not been projected in the 2005 budget. About ninety two thousand dollars was added back into the ems for additional paid staffing and bls and als their technicians to increase the rate of pay that they receive and two hundred and sixty nine thousand dollars was added back in to compensate in for the addition to the fire contracts which had now been projected when we had adopted the budget in 2005. There was also some increases for the South Queensbury Fire Department we did not actually contract with the South Queensbury SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 11/3/2005 MTG#49 62 Fire Department and project what they could operate on and as a result that it was actually more than what again we had projected in the 2005 budget. Along with that the two point seven million dollars in spending that we are projecting also includes a hundred thousand dollars in new debt for the West Glens Falls EMS building and about a seventy two thousand dollar increase in debt for the Queensbury Central Tower Truck. (page 10) This next slide goes hand in hand with the previous; this shows the amount to be raised by taxes. I thought it was important to show people that yes spending is up over four hundred thousand dollars in fire and ems but again we are raising more than we did last year in taxes but still less than in 2004. A good portion of that can relate back to the fact that we do have our bill for service up and running and we are projecting that we will take in at least four hundred thousand dollars in revenue next year because of that service. Because of that we were able to lower the amount to be raised by taxes even though we are seeing quite a dramatic increase in the ems and fire fund. (page 11) As a result of all of the tightening of our belts and the good job that all the department managers did as well as the Town Board again there will be no town wide tax for general fund, cemetery, highway and solid waste. (page 12) This last slide shows all the special districts in the town, again all of the special districts are down except for EMS which is slightly up and again the most dramatic increase that you see is in that we have not talked about yet that I will mention right now is wastewater and that is due to the Route 9 Sewer District that will have its first full year of a principal and interest payment. There was approximately three hundred thousand dollars additional in that spending in that sewer district. Of that three hundred thousand dollars, two hundred thousand dollars is principal and interest to be paid. The tax rate that is estimated for 2006 for the Route 9 Sewer District is still under the map, plan and report. Supervisor Stec-Do Town Board Members have any questions for Jennifer, this is we have been here before but this is the first time that you guys have had the opportunity to see Jennifer’s synopsis with the graphs and the tables that she put together. First we will have board members ask new questions that they might have of Jen and we will open it up to the public. Councilman Strough-Just one, now Jen, the percent increase in ems that does not include the revenue that we might be getting for bill for service? Budget Officer Switzer-No. Because the revenue itself is calculated in two separate aspects. We have to say this is what we are going to spend without looking at the revenues. So, that does not include the fact that we did increase the revenues for bill for service. Where that comes into play again is actually the tax rates and the amount to be raised by taxes and not necessarily an increase in the appropriations and what we are projecting that we will spend. Councilman Strough-Ok. And that is what I thought too, I just thought I would point that out. Thank you. Supervisor Stec-Ok. I will open it again, the public hearing is open and if there are any members of the public that would like to ask any questions or make any comments I will call on you and raise your hand and we just ask that you come to the microphone and state your name and address for the record and we will try to address any questions or comments. Anybody from the public? Any department heads want to make comment about anything, their department or anything else? Some department heads are also residents. I will take this opportunity while people are looking that, over what they got and digesting Jennifer’s presentation. Jennifer did shower some thanks and praise, complements on the department heads and the Town Board and I too would like to joint and add my sentiments as well to the Town Board and to the Department Heads in particular Jennifer you know with everything that is going on with fuel being a little crazy which impacts everything from fuel, heating oil, electricity, asphalt, chemicals and frankly if you get into the detail there are some pretty significant increases in chemicals for water treatment, wastewater but the departments did do another pretty good job this year it was not a down budget but last year was a pretty significantly down budget so I think we were successful in keeping it inflationary. I thought that a lot of people would find some of those charts and graphs that Jennifer put up there tonight pretty interesting to see where we have been and where we might be going. I think it does help to put into SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 11/3/2005 MTG#49 63 perspective last year because there were some areas that we thought some people might say this doesn’t look good but I think that if you look backwards at least more than a year and you see where the Town was before. I do want to add publicly to all the departments that are here and some that aren’t that they work very well with the Town Board and myself and Jennifer in putting together a respectable budget. So, I want to thank you. Again the public hearing is still open if there are any members of the public that would like to comment? Go ahead Pliney. Mr. Pliney Tucker-41 Division Road, Queensbury. 7410 The Library it is blank all the way. Councilman Brewer-What page is it Pliney? Budget Officer Switzer- He is actually looking on the your summary sheets. What used to be there at one point the Town funded Mountainside Library and we no longer do that. Supervisor Stec-That is one of the ones that we eliminated? Budget Officer Switzer-That’s was eliminated I believe in 2003. Supervisor Stec-Now that line, I am sorry to interrupt Pliney, is that one of those lines that where it is zero now, and eventually it will fall off you will not see it next year? Budget Officer Switzer-Right. Councilman Brewer-7410? Budget Officer Switzer-7410. It is in the general fund and it is listed as library. We no longer support the library the Mountainside Library. Councilman Brewer-Why is that Jennifer? Budget Officer Switzer-I do not know the history behind it, I know it had something to do with the hours of operation and the contract with it. Mr. Tucker-I remember it was eleven hundred dollars. Budget Officer Switzer-It was a pretty small amount. I honestly do not know what the history was behind it I do know that we have not funded it for I think since 2003. Mr. Tucker-The Board of Ethics, there is nothing in here for that. Budget Officer Switzer-No. That is not to say that if something comes up with the Board of Ethics, but we looked at, the Board of Ethics for two years I do not believe that we have had spent anything out of those line items. Mr. Tucker-So, you just took it out? Budget Officer Switzer-So, we just took it out, it does not mean that there is no longer a Board of Ethics, if we need money, if you look on line 1990 we still have a hundred and ten thousand dollars in contingency. So, if they need money for any reason Mr. Tucker-You can take it out of there. Budget Officer Switzer-We can take it out of there. Yes. Mr. Tucker-Thank you. Supervisor Stec-Anyone else from the public tonight? Ok. I will close the public hearing. It is our intention not to act tonight, we do have a resolution scheduled for th Monday the 7 our next Regular Town Board Meeting to adopt the budget so we will not act on this tonight. We appreciate again everyone coming this evening and we hope that SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 11/3/2005 MTG#49 64 the Town of twenty five thousand residents and I see four members that are not employed by the Town here from the public perhaps there is some satisfaction with the budget. There is always room for improvement and just to be on record, because I have told the department heads this privately and I have said this to members of the public privately but I will say it publicly and Jennifer made a reference to a hundred and ten thousand dollar contingency line that we do have in there which we are hoping that we will manage this budget so that will be an adequate amount of contingency. Certainly, should we come across anything next year unforeseen for starters if it is a capital issue we have a capital reserve, if it is a non capital issue we have the contingency and then on top of that we do have surplus. So, but preferable before those two there is jumbling back and forth between line items within a department between line items from department to department. So, again working together if something comes up and highway needs to cough up some money for parks and rec. and visa versa we could, again we are standing by and I am sure I speak for the whole Board we will be flexible, whatever the needs are we are going to answer the bell. So, but I wanted to be on record with that, because department heads have heard me say that. I think Jennifer has done a very good job as things come up and somebody says I really would like to spend this but I did not budget for it eight months ago because I did not foresee the problem, that we have been able to answer the needs and the Board has been I think pretty responsive to the departments and you deserve it because you have been responsive to us in the budgeting process and in your spending practices, so we appreciate it. So, the public hearing is closed, we will act on this budget Monday night and I do not have any other information or agenda items for open session but I do need to ask for an Executive Session. RESOLUTION CALLING FOR AN EXECUTIVE SESSION RESOLUTION NO. 505.2005 INTROUCED BY: Mr. Tim Brewer WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. John Strough RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby moves into an Executive Session to discuss litigation involving underground utilities. Duly adopted this 3 day of November, 2005 by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Turner, Mr. Strough, Mr. Brewer, Mr. Stec NOES: None ABSENT: Mr. Boor RESOLUTION ADJOURNING EXECUTIVE SESSION RESOLUTION NO. 506.2005 INTRODUCED BY: Mr. John Strough WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. Theodore Turner RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby adjourns its Executive Session. rd Duly adopted this 3 day of November, 2005 by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Turner, Mr. Strough, Mr. Brewer, Mr. Stec NOES: None ABSENT: Mr. Boor SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 11/3/2005 MTG#49 65 No Action Taken RESOLUTION ADJOURNING TOWN BOARD MEETING RESOLUTION NO. 507.2005 INTRODUCED BY: Mr. John Strough WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. Theodore Turner RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby adjourns its Special Town Board Meeting. rd Duly adopted this 3 day of November, 2005 by the following vote:] AYES: Mr. Turner, Mr. Strough, Mr. Brewer, Mr. Stec NOES: None ABSENT: Mr. Boor Respectfully submitted, Miss Darleen M. Dougher Town Clerk-Queensbury