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2001-11-08 SP SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING November 8, 2001 MTG. #49 RES. 4227:00 p.m. TOWN BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT SUPERVISOR DENNIS BROWER COUNCILMAN JAMES MARTIN COUNCILMAN THEODORE TURNER COUNCILMAN DANIEL STEC COUNCILMAN TIM BREWER TOWN DEPARTMENTS Water/Wastewater Supt. Ralph VanDusen Deputy Wastewater Supt. Mike Shaw Deputy Water Supt. Bruce Ostrander Assessor Helen Otte Parks and Recreation Director Harry Hansen Highway Supt. Rick Missita Deputy Highway Supt. Mike Travis Director of Community Development Chris Round Director of Building and Grounds Chuck Rice Director of Technology Bob Keenan Computer Tech. Coordinator Bill Shaw Senior Coordinator Kathleen Kathe Director of Solid Waste James Coughlin Comptroller Henry Hess SUPERVISOR DENNIS BROWER OPENED THE MEETING PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE 1.0 PUBLIC HEARING 2002 TOWN OF QUEENSBURY BUDGET NOTICE SHOWN Supervisor Brower-I guess this evening we have a power point presentation. We are going to start out Harry is going to start out the program, Harry are you here? Harry Hansen, Director of Parks and Recreation for the Town is here. You will start out Henry? Henry Hess will start it out. Town Comptroller Henry Hess-Good evening everybody, my name is Henry Hess I am the Comptroller for the Town. It is really quite a pleasure tonight to see more of the public here than we have had in recent years. In fact I would guess this is probably my fifth presentation more of the public here tonight in all the past years. There has been some news about the budget and tax rates this year and I hope that has stimulated some interest. If you just came out to see a power point presentation I hope that does not disappoint you. This is my fifth presentation of the budget for the Town of Queensbury. Generally and every year we have tried to do a couple things. First of all you expect to hear about the numbers budget, the budget for the Town is really much more than that and much more important than that. We like to also take time to point out the value of what your government does for you and the value of the services you receive. We will show the budget here in a few minutes and we will go over it and with some slides and discuss it from a slightly different perspective than you will see in the budget booklet. If you haven't received a budget book but they are available up here its this, it really consists of four sections. The first sheet inside the cover on mine it is a pink sheet on some of them they are white. It says budget summary and tax rate estimates. There is a sheet that says fund balance analysis and they are the two primary sheets that really summarize the budget in detail for you. Behind that there is a number about six or seven pages that show revenue estimates and six pages that detail, in a very summarized fashion the appropriations budget. The appropriations meaning the intended expenditures for two thousand and two. The book that you see lying on the table there next to the lap top computer is the full budget. It measures around three hundred and fifty three hundred and seventy five pages we do not distribute the whole thing it includes a tremendous amount of detail furnished by the department managers and guides them and reminds them during the course of the year of what their spending plan was in detail. The schedule that I just showed you in the booklet we're not going to show them on the screen tonight we are going to show slightly different ones. We are going to summarize them in a way to help you better understand the full impact of the two thousand and two budget. As I said earlier the budget is really more than just a spending plan it is really an expression of the value of the services you get and we like to do during these presentations some demonstration of practical value. We have done it in different ways in the past years this year we have decided to take a department that we believe is unique in a sense. Harry Hansen from Parks and Recreation is going to take a few minutes, probably ten or fifteen and just sort of highlight the features of his department for you. Why I think that is important, we could have chosen any number of departments but Parks and Recreation is unique in a sense that it provides a non-regulatory recreational actually almost competitive service for the taxpayer in town. He does not take out your trash, he doesn't care take, acts as caretaker of the deceased like we do in the cemetery, he does not provide water, he does not flush away your sewage but it does provide a unique service that touches a lot of people in town. What I am going to do is ask him to take fifteen or twenty minutes to highlight the features of his department and then we will come back to the budget. Before we do that though I need to introduce someone else and it is Bill Shaw. One of the things neither Harry nor I do is put together power point presentations. We assemble their content we are not much on the technology end. The Town is blessed to have a very fine Technology Department. Bob Keenan is here, Bill Shaw is here, Ryan is not here, Ryan Lashway also serves in that department. But, Bill was very incremental in putting together as he has done for me in the past putting together the power point presentation that lets us illustrate the things that we think are important for you to see. I extend my appreciation to Bill his help that he has extended to us again this year and I introduce to you Harry Hansen. Once Harry is done we will come back and we shake everybody wake them up and then we will go into the budget process. Harry Hansen Director of Parks and Recreation-Initially he said five to ten minutes and then he said fifteen to twenty. Let me introduce myself again, my name is Harry Hansen I am the Director of Parks and Recreation. I am proud to be able to say that I have been the Director for twenty-three years here and have been in charge of the Parks and Recreation Department. I also want to thank Bill Shaw for helping me hopefully it will go right if it doesn't I will yell and he will come up. This is where I press the first one. Parks and Recreation Department, as you can see our main function is to try to provide a service to the community in terms of programs, activities, facilities. Here you see pictures of two individuals, I have no idea who they are, but they seem to be enjoying themselves and we hope that is the end product for the department. What makes up the Town of Queensbury's Parks and Recreation Department? To begin with on the left side you have the Recreation Commission that is a group of seven volunteers appointed by the Town Board to over see the department they have responsibility through State Law to oversee the entire department including the hiring and firing of all park personnel, park and recreation personnel. The seven members at the present time Sharron Simmonds who is and has been the Chairman for a number of years, Doug Auer a long time standing individual, John Carusone sorry to report that John has just resigned because he is moving to Florida for half a year so you are going to ask the Town Board to make a replacement. Dave Hersh, Doug Irish a new member, Jack LaBombard who has been on the Commission for probably twenty five years and Charles Maine. What they oversee besides the department itself, the personnel within that department. You have a Director and Assistant Director, an Aquatics Supervisor and an Office Manager Receptionist. Besides those administrative personnel right now we have a staff of five maintenance personnel a foreman Bruce Baird, Don Harrington a mechanic, and then three laborers. As I said I came on board in 1978. The Office Manager Receptionist the first individual was probably 1987 the laborers have come on board as early as 1986, 88 we got two more in 90 and the last one in 2001. Over the years we have grown with the number of programs and activities and facilities that we have to maintain. That is the Department and then of course we do not want to ever forget the two hundred and fifty, two hundred and seventy five seasonal part time people who are really the ones that are out there teaching the lessons, doing the life guarding teaching the playground activities. They are really the ones that if you did not have those individuals the Department would not be anything. It would be a lot of names with a lot of titles. So, we are I think a very good department because of those individuals. How do we get the word out? Every year we put out two brochures one is a winter brochure one is a summer brochure usually between eight to twelve pages. They are mailed to the community through mailings made easy. Hopefully everyone gets one, I am embarrassed to say that I have not received my winter brochure and I am the Director, but at least I do know they have gotten around and we will get ours sooner or later, again it is the postman sometimes. But, we send out about twelve thousand brochures and those brochures outline in detail all the programs and activities also tell you about the parks we have. We are going to get into them a little bit more today. It gives you all the basic information how to register, where to register hours of operation. We think and we hope that it is a good brochure, it tells you a lot of information and we expect to hear back if it is not good, we do hear back believe it or not. Parks and Recreation Facilities. Obviously you run programs you run activities were do you run them. We are fortunate in Queensbury over the last twenty three years we have accumulated a lot of parks we have developed them we done the things that needed to be done and right now we kind of service over four hundred and fifty acres park land forest, playgrounds, ball fields in the facilities category. If things go according to hoyle in the next couple of years we are probably looking at another hundred and fifty acres. So, we have a formidable size I want to say park district that is in the mid west, but a park and recreation department especially in terms of the acreage that we maintain. They are all done with those five laborers. You can tell this is probably my first power point presentation. Gurney Lane, decided to put that up number one because that is probably the gem of the department. It is a one hundred and thirty acre park just west of exit twenty on the Northway. It was the first park that we had here in 1978 when I came on board. It was twenty-three acres; we now have increased it to a hundred and thirty acres. We were able to put in sixty two hundred square foot concrete swimming pool and diving well. It has a large picnic pavilion it has approximately one point three miles of nature trails and a cross country ski trail should be anywhere from two point five to three miles worth of ski trails. Cook out picnic facilities the small pond that we have that used to feed the old asphalt pool is flooded and skate-able in the wintertime. We also use one of the hills there as a sledding hill. We have made the park which was a twenty- three acres small park in 1978 into a full year round facility. Again, showing, trying to make good use of the funds and getting the public to use the facilities. I will have questions after words if you have questions or comments or concerns or. Ridge Jenkinsville Park probably the second biggest park in terms of acreage approximately eighty acres, between Jenkinsville Road and Ridge Road just south of the landfill. It is what we call our athletic facility. We have four full size clay infield softball fields. The adult league plays there in the summertime from first week in May till it depends on the weather almost the 1st of September, have forty eight men's teams nineteen women's teams of twenty to twenty five individuals a piece, they play six nights a week so it is quite heavily used in the sununer time. In the winter time we try to make cross country ski trials we do if mother nature helps us out with rain have a small ice skating rink. There is a picnic pavilion and a cook out grill there we have a play apparatus area and a sports field. You see soccer being played there our fall soccer program any were from four hundred and fifty to five hundred and fifty children participate in the fall and then the Adirondack Youth Soccer League participates there another two or three hundred. So, again these parks are heavily used and again through out the whole year. Hudson River Park, was there today a few of you were there today, this is probably the newest park not really, Freedom Park is, but Hudson River Park was a park the acreage was dedicated by Mr. DeSantis to Warren County who then leased it to the Town and just this spring the State Legislature on behalf of Betty Little was able to get that off the Warren County rolls and into our rolls. We now own Hudson River Park completely the forty four initial acres, the seven additional acres, approximately a little over fifty and there we have a boat launch and it says dock facility because today we put in a four section six foot by twelve foot long, forty eight foot long, six foot wide by forty eight foot long floating dock that you will be able to launch your boat, John that is you, take it out and you will not have to tie up the launch. Something we had in the initial budget we did not have the money for, we had to wait a couple of years but we came thorough. We have a softball field there we have basketball court, play apparatus, picnic pavilion with a cook out grill and we hope this year with our used snowmobile that we are about to buy we are going to create snowmobile, we are going to create cross country ski trails down there. What you see pictured there is a pavilion is a gazebo that was donated and erected by the Rotary Club. One Saturday probably a year ago they bought the materials and with some of the departments help and their sweat equity they put that gazebo up. It is in between the softball fields on your left and the play apparatus area on your right. That is on the end of Big Boom Road approximately fifty acres. Hovey Pond Park Hopefully most of you have been there it is kind of in the center of town and it is another facility that we are pretty proud of. It was given to us by Finch Pruyn way back in the late 80's. We did not do anything with it and then we had a Highway Supt. that said he could do something with it and he did. With the Highway Dept. help we created a four-acre pond it is about eighteen feet deep. We stock it in the summer time as a matter of fact we just stocked it about three weeks ago New York State came up with seven hundred brook trout they did not know what to do with it so I of course offered Hovey Pond and next spring there should be some good size fish in there. It has a handicapped fishing access thanks to Trout Unlimited, play apparatus area thanks to an Eagle Scout project, Historical Time Line, Marilyn VanDyke keeps it filled with real neat information about Hovey Pond and the history behind the pond. So floral gardens that the Friends of Hovey Pond and especially Bob Eddy have taken great pains to keep beautiful and very pristine. When Mother Nature cooperates and she usually does the pond freezes over we will clear it and usually provides an ice skating area. Nice park, nice for just walking you walk around three times and I think it is three and a quarter and you get a miles worth. Right in the center of town Lafayette on Glenwood Avenue by the Queensbury Central Fire House. West End Park The first park in the Town park wide system, way back in 1982 Warren County Planning Department. Supervisor Fran Walter wanted to create a park we chose the west end area, we bought this little piece of property just south of Luzerne Road, just west of the Northway. We created a two acre little park, it has got a basketball court on it, play apparatus area we flood it in the wintertime for ice skating, picnic pavilion that you can see there and just the last two months we have been putting all new play ground equipment there which will be ready for next summer. Park cost twenty six thousand dollars, we gave thirteen, we got thirteen from the Hud Grant and that was the first neighborhood park. We have put in new parking just this fall and should be ready to go for another year of enjoyment. Hudson Pointe Nature Preserve This was a gift just last year from the Open Space Institute it was purchased from the Niagara Mohawk in the West Glens Falls area south of Corinth Road. It is eighty three acre nature trail, a lot of woods a lot of beautiful scenery they have done a lot of the sign is the actual sign from the park they have put a bridge in down at the bottom gorgeous place to walk, take a trek, we are hoping, we do not maintain this ski trials there like we do at Gurney Lane and Ridge Jenkinsville and some of the other parks, this is more kind of natural cross country skiing, so you have to be quite a good skier. Again it is available during the wintertime and the summer time we maintain it and will do so as it continues. South Queensbury Fire House At this moment it is the only park in the Town that is leased from anybody the rest are all owned. This is a nine acre parcel right directly behind the South Queensbury Fire House on Dix Avenue. We have a twenty-five year lease on it, which was orchestrated in 1987. It has a basketball court, softball field behind it the pavilion and cook out facilities you can see to the right and we have created an ice skating area behind it. It has some park equipment but it is limited and again another park we used to have playground activities here but now we have consolidated them into one location at Queensbury School we do not have the satellite locations anymore. Glen Lake Boat Access We decided to put this in because it is a nice little spot it is on the north side of Glen Lake on the Glen Lake Road and it is right adjacent to the Docksider Rest. It has an access for canoes and car top boats only. Again, the Highway Dept. like Hovey Pond helped out a great deal and it would not be possible to have this facility without their help and we appreciate it. It is next to the Docksider Rest. You cannot launch trailer boats here and that is what those two big items are there for to discourage people from launching trailers but canoes and car top boats are acceptable and we hope that you will take advantage of it. Freedom Park This is the newest park. The Highway Dept. had nothing to do with this, had to put that one in to. Freedom Park came by way of a gift from the Independent Living Center and the Kiwanis Club of Glens Falls through their efforts the Town was gifted this probably half- acre parcel on Glenwood Avenue right adjacent to the Independent Living Center. It is a barrier free playground, it is the second one that I know of, the first one is in Hartford Connecticut and it is called Jonathan's Dream. It was created for those that have handicaps that have a barrier and this is barrier free. If you are in a wheel chair if you are on crutches with a little bit of assistance you can use this equipment. It is open Fall through the Spring, Spring through the Fall I guess I should say. We will close it down now in a couple of weeks and put it away for the Winter time and open it back up in the Spring. This being its first year of use, it got a lot of use. Very happy to see it. As I say we have the Independent Living Center and the Glens Falls Kiwanis Club and a lot of volunteer help to put this together and if you haven't seen it do stop down you will get a better appreciation of what the Town folk can do when they put their mind to something. Last but not least we would be remise if we did not mention the Queensbury School. The facilities the areas that they allow us to use we have enjoyed for the twenty- three years that I have been here. A wonderful relationship with Queensbury School in the gyms, the pool in all the areas that they allow us to use for little or no fee. If there is a maintenance fee over and above, way-way over time sometimes they will charge us a small amount. But basically we have carte blanche over there for gyms for the swimming pools for athletic fields for class rooms, meeting rooms the ice skating area the department would not have survived would not have improved would not have expanded to where we are today if it were not for Queensbury School and the Superintendent and the Board and his predecessors. Their facilities are fabulous and we get to use them and the community gets the benefit. Future Development I thought I would put one last pitch in so that I could put a pitch in for the budget and the other things but some of the things that we are looking at in the future. OSI has just completed a purchase of what used to be known as Camp Jadamada the Faith Bible Church property. Approximately another eighty acres which is directly east of the Hudson Pointe property and directly west of a Town parcel just below Native Textile. When those three are put together as they will be sometime in the future you are talking about a hundred and fifty, two hundred acres of walking trail, hiking trail, bike trail, non motorized, horse trails if we allow them to use it. Right now we have named it Riverside Park and Nature Preserve but the Board and the Commission will make that decision in the future, this is just for this presentation. Hiland Park came as part of the Hiland Park PUD Mr. Bowen, Gary gifted the Town seventy five acres for his development. His development did not go but the acreage stayed with us, we hope, it runs parallel, it runs on either side of Halfway Brook from Meadowbrook Road all the way to Haviland Avenue, right behind the golf course. Great fishing areas, great hiking trail, we have plans to develop it. Expansion of existing parks, as I mentioned Gurney Lane one hundred and thirty acres, we probably only developed thirty, forty acres. Ridge Jenkinsville, eighty acres, we have probably developed twenty of them. The Department the Commission would like to move forward in some of these areas for more expansion of parks to meet the needs of the community. I just wanted to add one last thing before I shut down for the evening. A lot of people in the past have mentioned funding and have talked about the subdivision funds that the department has been squirreling away since 1986 collecting it from the developers and folks in the community for development of town houses, apartments, buildings. A lot of what you see here, development of Gurney Lane Pool, Ridge Jenkinsville, Hovey Pond, Hudson River Park and the next future parks money was spent out of those accounts. So, when it is said that we do not spend that money we have spent that money, quite a bit of it, we still have quite a bit left and we are going to spend it with the Boards help and permission but that money has been spent since 1986 when we started accumulating it. That closes my presentation and I have no idea how long I have talked for but should I open it for questions or am I finished? Does anyone have any questions or comments, or concerns, except Mr. Naylor? Sir. Supervisor Brower-Would you described to the public the surface at Freedom Park? Director Hansen-The surface at Freedom Park, I believe it is a four inch rubberized surface quite expensive that gets poured down on top of an asphalt surface. It is very rubberized and, in other words it is a no fall surface that if you fall you kind of bounce and it is the top surface that could be put in a facility like that and the Independent Living Center and the Kiwanis Club went the full route. Sir? Unknown-Can you talk to us a little bit maybe the future lighting of Ridge Jenkinsville. Director Hansen-One of the expansions that I did not mention but we have it in front of the Town Board at this time as I said Ridge Jenkinsville Park is used for adult softball and has been since it was created in 1987. We are hoping to do this coming year is to increase the size of the outfields another twenty, twenty five feet, increase the size of the fences to a six foot high fence because we have had some injuries with people hitting a four foot high fence running back after a fly ball. With the right deal we would like to put in lighting for two fields. This will increase the number of teams we can accommodate because we do have teams playing at Hudson River Park there is a non organized league, of eleven co ed teams that play there. We would like to encourage them to come up to Ridge Jenkinsville play under a nice condition and if we can get the lights we can increase play till ten, ten thirty at night we can also increase revenue. So, it is an in and out thing. Weare going to increase expenditures to add onto the park but we are going to increase revenue to kind of off set that. Sir. Mr. John Salvador-What is the total of recreation fee collected from subdivision? Director Hansen-I do not have a total number for you John. Mr. Salvador-Does anyone have it? Director Hansen-We could certainly tell you that but you know it does collect dividends, interest, it does not collect dividends. Mr. Salvador-What is the balance in the fund? Director Hansen-I believe it is over six hundred thousand the exact amount I do not know. I would not want to know on a day-to-day basis. Anyone else? Thank you very much for the opportunity and I will turn it back over to Henry. Comptroller Hess-You know it is important that you understand what I consider the value of Harry's Department, he did a very good job of going thorough and telling you the facilities and in terms of real estate value and facility value and hard fixed asset value you can make some assumptions as to what you think that is worth. The real value of the service he provides is I think in terms of the number of programs he offers, in terms of the number of people that uses the facilities not necessarily with programs. I do not know how he counts the people who go thorough the turnstiles or the people that just walk on his trails. In terms of programs offered through out the year if you were to take his two brochures you are going to find in the past year he tells me there were one hundred and twenty two programs offered, organized programs through the park. The total participants in those programs were nine thousand ninety five registered participants in those programs. If you disregard the casual use and the day use of the facilities that he offers there were three hundred and fifteen thousand hours and equating that to a budget of five hundred and seventy six thousand dollars, far less, well less than two dollars per hour for organized recreation activities for the citizens of the Town. I think that is commendable and I think it is something that people need to know. I bring that up not necessarily because it is, I am trying to highlight the recreation department I think that we could go around the town, I think you relate to this because you can drive around and see these facilities and probably most of the people in the room at one time or another have taken advantage of some of those. But, you can go around the Town and find the same level of efficiency and expert service and good return on your dollar, whether you are talking about solid waste or wastewater, certainly in the water department for those are customers of that. If you go to the Clerk's Office and the thousands of transactions that are handled through there whether it be tax collection or other types of clerk services. The Cemetery /Crematory although it is a isolated and a more selective market the service they provide. I cannot say that they are all that we do not have to look at the finances of some of those we talked about it through out the year we talked about it last year we have to make sure that they remain efficient and effective. Harry's department is a good example of what Queensbury tries to deliver in terms of service and in terms of value for the tax dollars that it collects. Whether it be property tax or sales taxes because they are all taxpayer dollars. As promised we will start with the budget process. You have in front of you a budget book and I think if you look at the and don't try to follow this along because you are not going to be able to do that necessarily, but there is six sheets in there that talk about appropriations and the first appropriation sheet deals with general fund appropriations. It has got hundreds of numbers on it, it has got probably forty or fifty lines very fine lines of type that go department by department and break it down into personnel, fringe benefits, equipment and a series of other categories. What I am going to try to do is just go through this in a very general way and give you some sense of the magnitude and the breakdown of how the town, what the Town Budget looks like in comparison to prior years and in some cases and specifically what it will look like in 2002. The sheet you are looking at here encompasses the first series of numbers on the page I am referring to it is the General Government Support. If you take the legislative the judicial and the executive branches of government which on that sheet are labeled ten, eleven and twelve. The number begins with ten, eleven or twelve, which are the Supervisor's Office, the Town Board and the Town Court. The Finance Department consists of the Comptrollers Office, Audit, Budgeting, Purchasing the Assessors all fall under there. Staff, including such things as The Clerk, Town Counsel, Elections and a couple other small other functions. Shared services, the Town is getting larger and every couple of years we add another shared service. In other words we it is inefficient now for every department to maintain their own phone service, to pay their own phone bills, so we have shared services provided for under the uniform system of accounts. Information Technology, our computers are now the computer service through out the Town are now a shared service and centrally located. Phones, mailings, buildings and grounds and a couple other small ones that fall under that category. Special issues, primarily in this category for the Town it is liability and insurance. It is an unallocated insurance we cannot determine what department uses what portion so the State allows us to call it a special issue, come under an unallocated format or unallocated category which is what this is. Then you have the contingency under general government services. The contingency consists of really two numbers there is a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar that the Board has been allocating every year for the last several years to pick up to make up for unanticipated expenses. You never know, we do not budget for things such as a need roof or a major accident or a major loss of a vehicle, or other expenses that come up, other spending opportunities that may come up throughout the year that is deemed necessary by department manager and if they are able to convince the Town Board that is should be spent. So, there is about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars there and then there is a provision in there for salary adjustment for people, for staff members that are not working under a collective bargaining agreement. As you can see that part of the budget has increased this year about four point four percent or on very near the ratio of the budget in its entirety. The next part of the budget is Government Services Public Safety considered the Fire Marshal, Crossing Guards and a couple other small expenses. Health Department is basically the Health Officer as you say it is a very small expenditure there. Transportation, Highway Administration, Street Lighting that does not fall under a street lighting district, sidewalks. Economic Opportunity and Development, just sort of a catchall category, totaling small amounts. Culture and Recreation, Harry's Department Parks and Recreation both fall into that the Historian and some of the contributions that we made, some of the support that we offer to museums and cultural centers in and around the area are included in that category. Home and Community Services, Planning and Zoning. That is pretty much Chris Round's department he has some categories in other areas but that is most of his department and transfers to reserves and projects. The amount this year is six hundred and fifty one thousand dollars. You are going to notice that over the past couple of years it has gone from eight hundred and eleven down to a hundred and eleven down to six hundred and fifty one thousand dollars. That is a volatile area we try to stabilize that but, this is the first year that if everything goes well you are going to notice a very stabilizing effect there. This past year the Town adopted a Capital Improvement Plan and I am sure that you read that it funded it with Capitalization of two and a half million dollars and to support that plan on an on going basis, because you just don't put two and a half million dollars in the bank and spend it down to zero. It is a long term plan intended to keep up with the capital needs of the Town for a long time. So a half million dollars is in that code for the capital improvement plan. Hopefully that amount or an amount similar to that will be appropriated on an annual basis. The other hundred, there is another hundred and fifty thousand in there for support for the Queensbury Economic Development Corporation the Town has had a long term relationship with that organization it reorganized a couple years ago it is now taking on more significant projects and more meaningful projects and I think pretty much most of this hundred and fifty thousand dollars deals with or is allocated or ear marked for the South Queensbury, it is providing sewer to the industrial park. That includes all the government services that are included in the general fund. There are other appropriations, employee benefits represent a large part of the Town General Fund expenditures and we will come back to that, you will see that in another format in just a moment and you will see the magnitude of that. Debt Service is a very small part of the Town's general fund. We have virtually no debt it looks like a big increase this past year because it went up twenty two thousand dollars but that twenty two thousand dollars was simply a debt service on some printing, copying equipment that we bought because it was very favorable to buy that on a one year a loan basis but that is a very insignificant amount. Three amounts that really do have some significance and that you will see again as you go through the budget and one is the transfer to highway fund, two and a half million dollars of the taxes collected through the general fund will be transferred into the Highway fund to support their operation, two hundred and thirty thousand dollars are ear marked to be transferred to the Cemetery Fund to support their operations and forty five thousand dollars to fund a small operating deficiency in the solid waste department. Total appropriations in the General Fund this year total over Nine million dollars, that is gross if you take the two million seven off of that which is you would count twice if you didn't. But the number you are looking at are consistent. You are comparing apples with apples there are you like to say but as you can see we are on a trend of increasing expenditure in the General Fund for the past two year of about seven and a half percent and a half per year on average. This year we are up fifteen percent from what we were two years ago, seven and a half percent from what we were last year. Appropriations by fund What we looked at a minute ago was the General Fund which is the where the General Town Tax or what our sales tax revenue primarily supports. The Town is really broken up into divided up into a number of specific operating funds. As you can see we have the General Fund the Cemetery Fund which is a separate accounting entry even though it is supported to some degree by the General Fund, self insurance is simply a fund that we set up to insure some old workers comp claims and our own disability insurance that is self funded. We don't put that out into the commercial markets. The Highway Fund as you can see is a separate fund, emergency service which is fire and ems, lighting districts there are a series of five or six, six or seven lighting districts, wastewater has I think five districts, water funds and solid waste. Employee benefits represent as you can see from here represent nearly forty percent of total town wide expenditures, personnel being payroll and employee benefits. The significant part of this is right there forty seven point six percent of payroll is represented by fringe benefits. That is a pretty high number, I think that several years ago we were looking at thirty, thirty five percent but it really there are two functions that you have to look at. One is the increasing cost of health insurance which is growing we have off set some of that in recent years, in the last two years by savings in workers comp and in other areas. The other thing that is traditional in government is that salaries are not the highest, benefits are usually better than average. So, if salaries are not the highest and gross pay is maybe below average higher benefits usually compensate public employees to some degree for that. So, net pay is closer to their private sector counter parts. I am not making characterizations as to how that fits into the scheme of things in Queensbury but the forty seven point six percent appears to be a high number but on the other hand total personnel expenses for the Town are down to less than forty percent, which is really advantageous. The second category I guess we look here and compare to where it was last year. This is simply a comparison of where we are this year and where we were last year and as you can see personnel expenses because of savings in some areas, because of savings in workers comp last year there was some generous budgeting that we did not need entirely it was transferred to other expenditures, but personnel expenses are virtually flat with what they were last year. Equipment and Capital A very small part of the Town's budget goes for Capital Expenditure. In the General Fund we have some misc. equipment type things, we have computers we refurbish every year, we have some office equipment that has to be replaced or added. It becomes a very small part of the general fund budget. Where you run into the bigger numbers obviously is highway and you would expect that in a highway. This coming year there is a four- wheel drive pickup truck and what they call an aqua tech, which is, I understand it is a machine that they use to clean out road drainage. He nodded yes. They are replacing old units, two old units with one new unit for that, rather than replace two old trucks they are replacing two dump bodies that is included in that number and there is a replacement of one tandem dump truck. So, in comparison that number in some years that number is much higher than that. This year it is less than a half a million dollars and really not a significant as it could be for a highway department that covers as many miles as it does and offered the size fleet that it does. The other large number on there is in the water funds. The capital that is being spent there, there are a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for water line upgrades they are buying a one ton truck a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to upgrade to radio read meters is in the budget and that is a continuing program that is about a ten year program and they are replacing a truck with a three ton trailer. So, you can see there are very modest increases in capital fund expenditures next year and it really represents a small part of the twenty one million dollar budget. When you talk about dept service you are really talking about qualified and non- qualified dept. Qualified debt is debt that the State keeps track of because it is supported by General Tax Revenue. That is all we have is fifty five thousand dollars. I think my last calculation is that the Town is eligible to borrow about a hundred and ten million dollars, please don't think that we are out going to do that, we would need some serious tax revenue to cover the debt service. But, we have a good rating, we have good assessments, high assessments and we have the ability to if it were necessary to carry a heavy debt service but the Town is very conservatively managed and debt service is negatively for qualified debt service. Where we have debt is in the water and sewer departments. It is declining there has been no new debt added of any significance for the past year it is declining it is being retired on schedule and from time to time we have the opportunity to recast that at favorable interest rates. Right now we are looking at, well two years ago we refinanced the water department the water plant at a savings over the life of the bond of about a million dollars and right now we have one on the table and it looks like it will come about in January we are going to refinance some wastewater debt of about a million dollars, just a little less than a million dollars and the savings on this will be right in the range of ninety thousand dollars over the remaining life of the debt. So, while we are not adding more debt we are refinancing our old debt to more favorable rates as we have the opportunity. We have this category that we come back to every year and people say what is contractual expense means. That is other expenses anything that doesn't fall into one of the other categories into personnel, into equipment, into debt service into fringe benefits pretty much falls into what we call contractual category. Supplies, maintenance repairs, departments that do not participate in the centralized phone service or centralized mailing, conferences, travel, fuel for vehicles they are all considered other expenses. I would personally if I were running commercial business I would break that out finer we do use the State's accounting method and this is the way it is accounted for. Incidentally just so you are aware although the State accounts for this in one category called contractual expenses, the Town actually maintains a if you were to go through the book that is one of the reason it is so thick. The Town maintains about a hundred and twenty subsidiary accounts of that one category. So, that we can compare, so that we can categorize lets say fuel expenses for all departments very easily by just going in and pulling a code for fuel. So, we do have a much more sophisticated accounting system it is just when you go to report it looks like we are spending virtually seven million dollars in one account code, this is not necessarily true. It is not at all true. Then we come back to where we have Reserves and Projects. We talked a few minutes ago about the General Fund, six hundred and fifty one thousand, five hundred thousand dollars of it is ear marked for the Capital Improvement Plan a hundred and fifty thousand dollars is ear marked for QEDC and the South Queensbury Project. The water funds the four hundred and seventy thousand we went through that a few minutes ago. That is another major category in it is about six percent of the total town expenses and another major category of our accounting and our budgetary process. As you can see budget last year, the total budget this year, the total expenditures this year will be Nineteen million eleven thousand dollars. There are two hundred and, nearly three million that are going to be transferred among funds, so although we talk about our budget being nearly twenty two million dollars, three million of that is really transfer among funds. In other words we are spending money between funds. Two million seven hundred and seventy five we talked about a few minutes ago was transfer to highway, transfer to cemetery and transfer to solid waste. The money is also included in their expenditure colunm so even though we report a budget of twenty two million dollars the actual expenditure for the Town will be in the neighborhood of nineteen million. There are two categories that fall within these others that are usually of interest to the public and in which the board has to spend some time and deal with separately. One is the support it grants to non-profits, the community service types of support that it gives to this group of recipients. American Legion, Mountside Free Library, most of them are there from prior years. This year the total is ninety seven thousand one hundred dollars it is up significantly but it is up significantly because the Board gave careful consideration to the services provided by some of those agencies and add one or two, I think there are two new ones there and increased the appropriations for some others. Councilman Brewer-The big dollars ones that we put in there this year are the Land Conservancy, right? Comptroller Hess-That is the only large one that was added, a small one was added in Caritas. Land Conservancy of course is a committee appointed by the Town and I am not sure of it function it is not within realm it is more of a Chris or Harry question but it is a Town supported operation. The second category of expenses that the Town has to look at separately and we need to tell you about separately are Elected Officials Salaries. When the Board adopted the budget which we expect will happen a week from Monday that is the date on which the need to take final action or by that date and part of the process is to approve a budget and to also approve the salaries that they are going to pay elected officials. Other salaries in the Town can be dealt with in other ways. They can be decided at another time, but Elected Officials have to be declared at this point. That colunm should say at the heading 2001 and the colunm to the right should say 2002. That is what is projected for Elected Officials salaries next year. The other important element in the budget process is balancing the expenditures with the revenues. I am pleased this year that the Town Board explored more fully explored the revenue structure of funding Town operations. It has been talked about in the past and it has been consciously dealt with in the past and decision were made for the good of the Town under the circumstances that existed at that time. The significance of looking at sales tax is because that is going to, that has always been and as you see from 1988 is when we started is when I have accurate records available. So we went back to 1988 and that is since that time sales tax is virtually funded most of General Town Operations. You can see the change to year to year it goes up six percent it goes down six percent it goes up five percent it comes down two percent. But, generally it has been on the rise and Town government has grown in proportion pretty much, petty much grown in proportion to its increase in sales tax revenue. The trend is up I will point out to you the trend is up on sales tax as you would expect. Because prices go up because retail has gone up and because tourism is up. But it is not without its drops. It does have some drops and some of the drops that you will see in a few minutes are really significant in the over all scheme of things. The other thing I need to point out to you is see a six point eight percent drop for 2002, I am not necessarily projecting that sales taxes are going to decrease in the Town that much next year. That is a budgeting mechanism that helps us avoid a crisis in the event that it does drop off. Budgeting exactly what you think you get when you have a margin of error invites budgeting disaster and last minute cut backs and changing in spending plans that may not be the most fruitful way the most efficient way to run government. So the five seven, the five oh is the highest we have estimated it is slightly less then we are going to get this year which is about a little less than six point two and that is variable that could be slightly up or slightly down from that. As you can see we have received all our sales tax for this year except for the fourth quarter and for the past fourteen years between twenty-four and twenty six percent of sales tax is coming in the fourth quarter. So, we estimated that twenty five percent would be coming in the fourth quarter and if that holds true we will receive a little less than six point two million dollars worth of sales tax. So, anyway we are using five point seven million dollars as an estimate not necessarily, for budgeting purposes we all hope that it is in the six million dollar range or higher but that is the estimate for now. So, what I needed to do was to go back and decide to what degree can we, what element, what degree of confidence do we have in future sales tax receipts. So, what we took was the first year that we have reliable numbers it was 1988 and we know what tax we collected that year and this year we have a good sense of what tax we are going to collect this year. If you just take those two numbers and extrapolate from that what you would see the tax increase had it grown from that number at the rate of three point eight two percent each year it would be six point one six nine million in 2001. So, that tells us generally the rate could have averaged out at three point eight two percent. However, this is the same chart but we filled in the years 1989 through the year 2000 and what we have taken we have filled in the sales tax revenue that has actually come in and we have calculated the three point eight two percent raise from each of the preceding years and plotted it along side of it and did a comparison, a comparison of the two numbers. What we find is that at while you could look at 88 and 2001 and say it looks like taxes have grown at 3.82 percent the fact is over that period of time we would have had, we would have not received three and a half million dollars for the sales tax over that fourteen year period. So, that it was not an even progression, it was a progression that occurred in leaps and bounds and in drop backs. So, using the 3.82 percent isn't necessarily the safest way to predict the future but it does give us a sense of how do we need to balance what do we need to balance for sales tax. Here again, this discussion is not an indicator of what we need to do in the future but it does give us a sense of what has happened in the past. If you take that three and a half million dollars and divide it by the fourteen years that is represented there it shows that an average of two hundred and fifty four thousand or about a quarter of a million dollars less would have been received each year or fourteen point five percent on this current tax rate of fourteen point five percent. I think the significance of that is to say while we look at the fund balance that the Town has and it accumulated over the past lets say fourteen years it was accumulated because the tax rate was higher than fourteen point five percent because it needed fourteen point five percent to balance its budget during that period of time. We need to look at this in another way, and lets take for example the amount of money we raised during that fourteen year period and assume that we had gotten equal proportionate shares each of those years what would the increase have been. Instead of the three point eight some percent, three point eight percent we have actually received just slightly over three percent. So, our reliable estimate of increase in sales tax over a fourteen-year history is actually three percent with a lot of ups and downs in the middle. Two significant features, two significant factors that you have to read into that one is that if expenditures exceed three percent of your sales to prior year sales tax revenue that you are going to have a short fall and secondly if you fall into one of the minus years you are going to have a short fall. So, you need reserves to cover those two factors and that drives the need for a balancing effect for sales tax revenue. What do you do with that information once you have it? One of the things that we tried to do with it is to take and say how can we use that to forecast revenues into the future? Projections require assumptions or guesses. I cannot tell you how future tourism or retail trends in the County will effect sales tax collections. I cannot tell you and I cannot guess how efforts to balance the County budget, the budget of the County government will effect sales tax made available to the Town. I cannot guess what state and federal revenues that we have learned to rely on for certain projects will be effected in view of the spending priorities that have changed over the last couple of months for those institutions. So, all I can really do is make a couple basic assumptions using the history that we have to deal with. First of all I have assumed that Town, that budget will grow at the rate of five percent, they may not; if they don't then we will do better. I have assumed that property taxes will level at zero starting next year for the sake of this demonstration. I have also assumed that other revenues, misc. revenues will accelerate in the year 2002 and other revenues include appropriation of fund balance that are derived from either taxes, sales taxes received over and above what we estimated or money that was not spent that had been appropriated that is going to take a major jump in 2002 and then we will grow at a rate of three and a half percent. There are the three assumptions that we have made for this. If those three assumptions hold what that means is, sales tax growth will support town government if it grows at five point seven five percent each year. Now, there are variables, if five percent, ifbudgets grow less than five percent this can grow less than five point seven five. If this colunm grows at greater than three point five this colunm can grow at less than five point seven five. The inverse of that is this colunm will have to grow faster if the other colunms if this colunm grows slower or this colunm grows faster. As Town Comptroller and not as a resident and not as a tax payer of the town but as Town Comptroller I place a high value on long term tax stabilization and I place a higher value on stabilization if the tax rate is zero. What I am trying to demonstrate here is that if the Town Board elects to go to a zero tax rate it is sustainable if all the conditions hold true. Whether it is sustainable or not it certainly is not a detriment to one or two year's operations. But, this slide does demonstrate that a five point seven five percent increase in sales tax growth each year will off set a five percent spending increase in the general fund budget without an increase in sales, without an increase in property tax. This has been some what of a quick micro view of the Town budget I thank you for your attendance and attention and I thank the Town Managers for their diligence in putting together the budget for their cooperation in putting together as detailed a budget as we would like to put together. I trust many of the questions that you came in with may have been answered during the presentation, however the Town Board the Town Managers are all here to answer any specific questions you have regarding spending regarding taxes or regarding revenues. I thank you again for your attention this evening. Supervisor Dennis Brower-Thank you Henry. This is a public hearing on our budget and I would like to provide the opportunity for any citizens that would like to make a statement or ask questions to come forward and feel free to address the board. Would anyone care to ask any questions? Gee Henry you are sitting at the wrong table. Mr. John Salvador-I wonder if Mr. Hess notices Helen Otte blink when he mentioned the fact that we had a high assessment? Did you catch that? Supervisor Brower-I think it is an accurate assessment, don't you? Mr. Salvador-He said high. Councilman James Martin-High being defined as we have a lot of value in the town. Mr. Salvador-There is no question if we are going to sustain this zero town tax it is going to take a lot of effort and I mean cost control effort. That is going to have to be executed by the Town Board. You just can't do this and then you know sit back and see what happens. It is going to take a concerted effort. I am not sure that we have a real strong handle on the sales tax picture. The three percent increase in sale tax revenue is nothing more than an increase due to inflation. Sales tax is a percentage of a number if you pay more for a shirt you pay more sales tax. That three percent just represents annual inflation. It is not that we are doing more business more tourist, it is simply inflation. If you look at the inflation from 88 to 2001 it is just about that annual inflation rate. Not the inflation of 88 but rather the difference in the numbers. The County is talking about a one percent sales tax increase, I doubt that the Town will see any of that benefit; they will probably keep it to fund their debt. The County is talking about a two to three percent bed tax in the County. I maintain that is on all beds, even yours Mr. Turner. The legislature has jumped recently and we are talking about Indian Gambling, casino gambling on Indian Reservations. That is going to have a dramatic effect on us here. You will find the tourist going in another direction. You may even find some of the support services going in that direction. The Great Escape is basically on wheels. So, I think we have to take a real careful, careful look at this subject called sales tax and how it is going to effect us, this town in the future since we rely so heavily on it. I think we have gotten into some real bad habits because of it. If we are going to survive at this zero town tax it is going to take some real careful control. Thank you. Supervisor Brower-Thank you Mr. Salvador. Would anyone else wish to address the Board at this time? Mr. Tucker? Mr. Pliney Tucker-Division Road Queensbury Solid Waste fund, from the general fund forty five thousand dollars, I know we have an annual tire pickup every year, did we have two last year because of the Councilman Theodore Turner-We had two last year. Mr. Tucker-We had hazardous waste pickup. Councilman Martin-That was a one time thing, that is not going to be annual. Mr. Tucker-I understand that, that was paid out of the solid waste fund, right. Comptroller Hess-Fifty percent of that was paid out, fifty percent is being subsidized by State Agency. Mr. Tucker-So, naturally I guess my question is the solid waste fund is created because certain people in the Town use the transfer stations rather than have somebody pickup the garbage and what have you and such things as the tire pickup and the hazardous waste pickup should be an over all town charge correct? Rather than being a cost to the operation of the transfer station. Supervisor Brower-We account for it through out of that solid waste fund, if I am not mistaken. I think as it relates to the .. Comptroller Hess-Since the Town has a function set up for that type of operation it is properly charged to the solid waste disposal fund. I think that the Town does subsidize that and pay for it out of the general by virtue of the deficiency that we are paying for. I would like to mention that, this past year this next year budget has forty five thousand dollars appropriated to cover any possible deficiency in the solid waste fund. This past year we budgeted around twenty five thousand dollars, this is the first year that we have had that. We have not had to dig into that yet and chances are we will not have to by the end of the year. If we do that is also shared the net of expenses that are attributable only to Queensbury such as the environmental waste day the paint day or whatever we would deduct that out once we do that if we have a deficiency remaining that is shared with Glens Falls. We have not run into that situation yet. But, yes, the Town recognizes that the value of the tire day and the hazardous waste day can be shared by the Town and that is why the appropriation is made from the General Fund. Mr. Tucker-From the Balance Analysis, I know there is not anything that we can do about it because it is already gone, but I was here most of the time, but, we over spent nine hundred and fifty four thousand dollars and you have an idea of what we spent it on? Councilman Tim Brewer-Where are you Pliney? Mr. Tucker-Over on fund balance Comptroller Hess-The fund balance analysis I did not bring an exact accounting but during the course of the year there were and when we talk about over spent, there are appropriations of fund balance during the year that the town increase appropriations for various engineering costs, some of the drainage work that was done, and I cannot put my finger on all of them now. But, they were appropriation of fund balance that were approved by the Board in advance for certain things to be done out of fund balance. Mr. Tucker-Things that came up during the years operation. Comptroller Hess-Yes. It is not over spending of departmental budget appropriation, they were conscious spending plans. ..they were moved out of, they were moved from fund balance into a specific area to be spent. Mr. Tucker-Thank you. Supervisor Brower-Thank you Mr. Tucker. Would anyone else care to address the Board at this time? Mrs. Bennett, Good evening. Ms. Barbara Bennett-One thing that I was curious about is the Assessor's Office is down sixteen thousand something, does that ring a bell as to why it went down? Comptroller Hess-Let me take a look at it, something will draw my memory, just a seconds. Last year there was more equipment expenditures in that fund, I cannot remember exactly, for payroll is stable there and the contractual expenses are reasonable stable there but there were equipment expenses incurred last year that didn't not reoccur this year. There is Helen. Town Assessor Helen Otte-Barbara there was also we had a lot of appraisals last year for article 7 proceedings that were expensive, Sherman Island hydro electric facility, Pyramid Mall appraisal was paid out of the 2001 budget. Supervisor Brower-Price Chopper to didn't you Helen? Town Assessor Otte-Yes. Supervisor Brower-We won that one of course, I like to talk about the victories. Ms. Bennett-That is the kind of department that it seems like they are pretty busy and are also in charge of Glens Falls and it doesn't seem like it would ever be on the minus. Down to the bottom 9950 transfer to projects and reserve, last year it was fifty thousand dollars next year it is six hundred and fifty thousand dollars it is but six hundred thousand dollars. Comptroller Hess-Yes, she is on the appropriations side. Supervisor Brower-That is the five hundred thousand for the capital improvement plan and a hundred and fifty thousand that is budget to the Queensbury Economic development corp. Ms. Bennett -I am sorry I cannot hear you. Supervisor Brower-That is five hundred thousand for, is budgeted for the capital improvement plan and additional appropriation for funding the plan and the other hundred and fifty thousand is for the Queensbury Economic Development Corporation. They are developing an industrial park on which is part of the South Queensbury Sewer District. Ms. Bennett-Well, any budget that generates a big surplus is not good budgeting it is over taxation so when I see something like that I hope the budgeting stays within line of what you need rather than, when you show a surplus like that the Clinton Administration did that to, it may sound good but it is really not it is like the Clinton Budgeting. Other than that you have been around here six years? Comptroller Hess-Five. Ms. Bennett -Going on six. Comptroller Hess-I hope. Ms. Bennett-That is what I was going to say, you have been controversial every since you have been here so. I think it has to do with a lot of manipulating Comptroller Hess-Not mine. Ms. Bennett -there is all kinds of ways of doing it. So, I did think, I approve of putting out applications before they sign another contract with the Comptroller. Supervisor Brower-Would anyone else care to address the Board at this time? Yes. Sir, Mr. Metivier. Mr. Anthony Metivier-I think you are doing a fine job Mr. Hess. Comptroller Hess-Thank you. Mr. Metivier-I do applaud your efforts with the property tax cut as proposed, I just think that this is an awful, awful year to do it. You do not know what the future is going to hold you have no idea what the next few months are going to hold. With all of the years of economic prosperity in Queensbury why would you propose to drop the property tax this year, it makes no sense. I understand that you want to create economic opportunities in Queensbury believe me so do I, but it just seems you are jumping into this, this year when you really should not be. We have no idea what State funding is going to be we do not know with the attacks on the 11th what is going to happen. Consumer spending is down for the second month it is going to be, we have no idea what the future holds as far as sales tax revenue is. So why would you jump on this now? If you look at what the property tax equates to per house hold per day it is almost well roughly less than five cents a day for an average house hold, granted a hundred and twenty thousand dollar house. So at five cents a day you have to ask yourself is it worth it to take the chance right now to remove this property tax. At five cents a day that is one soda bottle that the average person would drink and throwaway, save it. At five cents a day if you cut out one coupon. One coupon for thirty-five cents and use it a week you would off set that tax you know for the year. So, I am saying, yes it is great that you are trying to reduce taxes and applaud you for that but you are taking chances this year and come May when you are all scratching your heads saying how are we going to make the budget this year because revenue is down and funding from the State is down and who knows what else could happen are you going to be sorry that you did this? Furthermore isn't it nice to have a surplus, how many towns in the State can actually praise that they have a surplus, very few, you should be very, very proud of that accomplishment. But, don't do away with it save it you need this money for a rainy day. You do not know what is going to happen. Another thing you could actually look at this one more year, wait to see what happens, put the money ear marked in a mutual fund or something and if after next year you find that you do not need the money give it back to the people in a rebate. If you look at it today we are doing good by eliminating the property tax but we are really uncertain you know say hey, this is what we are going to do. We are going to put this money aside if we need it we will use it and if we don't and we get through the next year then we will give it back to you and the money that this, that the property tax will generate in interest can be used as part of the rebate program, and at that point you can move on. It is just bad timing, it is a welcome change it is just really bad timing. That is all. Councilman Brewer-I appreciate what you are saying Tony but my thoughts are on this tax thing maybe that rainy day is now. This town has a substantial amount of money put away that is not ours. Maybe it is time to give it back to the people that can use it now. Maybe the time has come that if I want to somebody house and they had thirty bucks sitting on the coffee table would you rather give it to me or keep it for yourself? The way I see it we raised the EMS and Fire budget a percentage this will off set that so it will be zero. They, I was going to say I had a number in my head that in economics a dollar turns the number I thought it was, was seven, I talked to somebody yesterday and they said possibly two and a half to five, Henry and I talked a minute tonight and he said five times a dollar conservatively or average five times a dollar turn. So, if we put three hundred thousand dollars back into the economy that is going to turn into one point five so we are going to stimulate some spending and that will come back as tax revenue. Portions of that will. We have enough money that I asked about last week in accounts that were earmarked for certain projects that were never done, one point eight million dollars Tony, so if we had to we could support our Citizens of this Town for six years. That is three hundred thousand a year. I think that is pretty good thinking, pretty good use of tax dollar money in my mind that this is my explanation for it. I appreciate what you say but we do not know what is going to happen tomorrow, you are right, we know what happened yesterday and the day before we have no guarantee what is going to happen tomorrow, we may not be here tomorrow. Why do I want to take something from somebody when we do not have to I guess is my point. Mr. Metivier-I agree and believe me when I first you know, when you look at it you are doing a great thing. But, are you ready at this point to say hey, this is the year to do it? Are we ready from the standpoint are we ready to open up our doors for increased economic prosperity? I for one more than anyone else would welcome any kind of economic development in this town, but if you open up the doors to others saying hey, we have no property taxes here come on in, are you ready for what could possibly happen with that? Have you really looked into the fact that you know with a zero property tax you could really do some harm? Councilman Brewer-What harm could we do? Mr. Metivier-Look at Wilton, they are growing, they want to grow. But they are growing so rapidly are they ready to handle the growth that the next few years is going to bring? Are they truly ready? You do not know. Councilman Brewer-You can control it though. Mr. Metivier-But you can't. Councilman Brewer-Absolutely you can. Mr. Metivier-How can you control it, if you open up the doors how can you control it? How can you say yes to somebody and no to somebody else? Is it possible to do? At what point Councilman Brewer-Tony you are on the Planning Board and you should know as well as anybody that we can control growth. Mr. Metivier-Right and in that respect you can. But, have you looked into what this could possibly do? Councilman Brewer-I understand and I will talk to you about this at length any time you want and maybe this isn't the place for it, it has to start sometime, a portion of this board feels that the time is now. Wilton for example had a one point two million dollar surplus this year they appropriated nine hundred and eighty five thousand dollars of that so that they would not have to have tax. I think Wilton is doing pretty good for themselves. Councilman Daniel Stec-I spoke to Roy McDonald last week at length about this, I met him just once in my life months ago almost a year ago and he saw me in a crowd and came right up to me told me he thought it was a great thing to do he said if I wanted a written testimonial about how great it is to get rid of the property tax he would provide it. In todays Post Star John Geroux did interview him and he sounded like he had a similar message. I talked to previous council members, previous Town Supervisors I have not come across more than a couple of people that you know really do not think that this is a prudent idea. Mr. Metivier-Overall it is a great idea, believe me, I have applaud your efforts trust me when I say that, but it just seems, it is just the timing is wrong. Take that three hundred thousand dollars and immunize everybody in Queensbury against small pox, as foolish and stupid as that sounds what happens if we need that? Everybody might laugh but it is true. Councilman Brewer-The point is we have it though Tony. Mr. Metivier-Are you sure? Are you sure you are going to have it in the future? Councilman Brewer-lOO% sure. We will have it in the future, and if we need it in the future I think people such as yourself would be happy to pay the tax if we had to. If we had a zero rate right now for the next five years and we came to you and said Tony we need ten cents per thousand dollars of assessment would you say yes? Mr. Metivier-If you needed it. Councilman Brewer-So if we need it I think we ask for it in the right way we will get it with good reception if we don't need it and we don't take it we will have good reception then too. Mr. Metivier-Good Luck, I do wish you well. Supervisor Brower-Thank you. Mr. Nayor? Mr. Paul Nayor-Division Road Thanks for that zero guys as they say for the rainy day I think it is raining out right now and I am glad you did it. For us guys that are sixty-five that do not buy day old bread because we do not know if we are going to be here tomorrow it sure looks good to me. So give it to me for two or three more years and if I am in my casket drop it on top of mine. Thank you. Councilman Martin-Mr. Naylor always says things in ways you can understand. No beating around the bush. Supervisor Brower-Mr. Irish Mr. Doug Irish-Buena Vista-I do not know if I can follow Paul Naylor, I do want to complement the Board on tackling the issue I think Dick Merrill and I and Ted Turner and the other two members of our board also discussed it and kicked it around and figured we would wait too and I was an advocate for getting rid of the tax at the time so I hope it is something that you guys do implement this year. I think that if you are in a situation where that you are going to have to raise taxes to raise three hundred thousand you have more serious problems than that tax rate. For the Town to go into free fall like that it will not be just Queensbury it is going to be, it would not be just the State it would be the entire country before you have to worry about that three hundred grand. First time that I looked at the budget this year I see Mr. Missita had knocked off a hundred and ninety thousand dollars out of his budget this year, you are talking three hundred grand that is two thirds of it. You know you are not a long way from if you had to make up that money make it somewhere in the budget. I do not think that would be a big problem for you so I hope you guys stick to that and implement that. I would also like to complement Henry on his years of service here with the Town I think you have done a fine job and we have had our discussions in your office and I do appreciate the work you do for me as a taxpayer and also when I was on the Town Board. Supervisor Brower-Thank you Doug. Anyone else care to address the Board at this time, don't be bashful? Mrs. Bennett, sure. Ms. Barbara Bennett-I do not think any government agency should ever take tax payers money and invest it and then in case they don't need it give it back to them, you know how that works, they take it but they don't necessarily give it back and after all the taxpayer could invest it themselves in something. Councilman Stec-I really see it, it forces a certain amount of discipline on our board and future boards but we control the tax rate we have certainly a lot less control over sales tax but you work within your means and I think right now this is just a three hundred and twenty five thousand dollar cushion that we really do not need. If we spend down the five million dollar surplus over ten years down to something more reasonable in the process well we will learn but I certainly think that perhaps not indefinitely but over the next several year we can easily sustain this and it will be a learning experience for our Board and future Boards. Nineteen years ago Roy McDonald did it and, and Roy McDonald is still talking about it today. Councilman Martin-Just a couple observations as I sit here and listen to the deliberations and the comments. A couple things that are buried in these numbers you know from my perspective you know working in land use planning is that you are not dealing with a constant here this is not you do not have the same source for this revenue over the last twelve years. I disagree with a couple of things John said on the other hand I agree with a couple of things he said tonight. It has not been just merely an inflationary rate that has kept us going at three percent. Since 1988, 1985 we have had an unprecedented rate of growth. You look at the over all assessed value of the Town has grown exponentially and that is supported a mere three percent raise in sales tax revenue. So, you are not dealing with a constant situation there and Mr. Metivier comments are some what correct you are going to have to have that kind of growth in the landscape to support this zero tax and keep it going. Now what shape and form that takes is going to be very critical because if it these rooms in the meeting hall across the town were filled back in 1988 when the zoning plan was put in place to put the brakes on. So, you know, you are going to have to be careful because Roy McDonald maintains zero tax for a long time but look at the growth that has occurred there. I am not talking about residential growth either. So, you are going to have to have that growth on the industrial, commercial side to fuel this zero property tax. The other thing I will say is and I will put this challenge right at your feet Dennis, this is going to require leadership. I am not looking at any other member of this board. I am leaving, this is going to require leadership from you come next May that there is going to have to be a directive and policy given that this is what we are going to do on the expense side of the budget this year. These department heads need that guidance we cannot have a system by which we go to the prior years budget and expenses through this year and that being the basis for the item for item cuts, there has got to be general policy given you know. It is going to be a cap this year of two percent and that is across the board that this the only way you are going to maintain this zero tax, that kind of leadership and that kind of long term vision in the budgeting or you will have a ten, fifteen, twenty percent tax increase one year to make up for it. That is just my observation; it is going to require some real policy guidance in the long term. I came out in favor of it but I come out in favor or it with that attention to the expense side of the ledger. That has got to happen. Roy McDonald has done it, he has made some very tough decisions down there correspondingly to maintain that zero percent tax. That is what has got to happen here in the future. It is going to have to be in a way that we are not used to budgeting. It is no longer going to be the case where we can casually go through get all the expenses and make the revenues match any more. So, I lay that challenge at your feet, because that is the kind of leadership it is going to take in my opinion. Supervisor Brower-That is a cautious optimism. Councilman Martin-Yes. I think this can work but it is going to require some real leadership on the expense to the department heads. We have a fine group of department heads I praise them all the time, there is deep experience there and they are just looking for the guidance. Supervisor Brower-I think the entire Town Board is going to have to control spending in the future too. Councilman Martin-I lay that challenge at your feet you are the forty hour a week guy here. Supervisor Brower-You know something Jim, the Board spends money. Councilman Martin-I know. Supervisor Brower-Ok. It takes three votes or more to spend money and we have spent our share over the two years you have been on this board and quite frankly I do not regret most of it. I think most of it was utilized to provide services to citizens that they desired. Councilman Martin-I do not regret decisions made either there has been some things that had to be made up for and some corrections so called made but I just say if this is going to be the case and I agree with it, we are in a position where we can do that cause, what Mr. Metivier is probably not aware of or doesn't have the details behind is there is a two and a half million dollar fund balance there above and beyond what we should maintain that we are earmarking essentially for the capital improvement program. Now, that is what will suffer first if we have to start dipping into that fund balance and out years here to make up for increases in expenses. You will start trimming that back and back and back hopefully that will not have to happen. But, that is the first place that will have to be cut. That is our cushion. That will happen without loss of services or major calamities in the Town and that is quite a balance to work with. But, I would rather not see that happen. I think the Capital Improvement program an excellent thing it is the most exciting thing that will happen in this town in the next five years. But that will be the first thing that suffers. Supervisor Brower-I agree. Would anyone else wish to address the Board on the budget tonight? Mr. Strough? Mr. John Strough-John Strough, Queensbury-Just in reference to Tim you are right about the multiplier fact but where are those rabbits going to be breading? I mean if the County raises the sales tax to eight percent I am going down to Wilton to spend my money. Councilman Brewer-So you do not want to support your own community? Is that what you are saying? Mr. Strough-The argument was against the eight percent sales tax. Councilman Brewer-I understand that but you are talking to the wrong people about it. Unknown-Hopefully they are talking about the bed tax. Supervisor Brower-It is not appropriate for this discussion but I can assure you from a County perspective I am opposed to any increase in the sales tax but I would welcome an increase in the bed tax to support tourism. However that is another issue another topic for another time. Anyone else wish to address the board at this time on the Queensbury Budget. Ok in that case I will close the Public Hearing for this evemng. RESOLUTION ADJOURNING TOWN BOARD MEETING RESOLUTION NO. 422.2001 RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby adjourns its special meeting. Duly adopted this 8th day of November, 2001 by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Martin, Mr. Turner, Mr. Stec, Mr. Brewer, Mr. Brower NOES: None ABSENT: None Respectfully submitted, Miss Darleen M. Dougher Town Clerk-Queensbury