Loading...
1999-11-04 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING NOVEMBER 4, 1999 7:00 p.m. MTG. #43 RES. 376-377 TOWN BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT SUPERVISOR FRED CHAMPAGNE COUNCILMAN RICHARD MERRILL COUNCILMAN THEODORE TURNER COUNCILMAN DOUGLAS IRISH COUNCILMAN PLINEY TUCKER TOWN BOARD ELECT SUPERVISOR ELECT DENNIS BROWER COUNCILMAN ELECT DANIEL STEC COUNCILMAN ELECT TIMOTHY BREWER TOWN OFFICIALS TOWN CONTROLLER HENRY HESS WATER SUPERINTENDENT RALPH VANDUSEN CEMETERY SUPERINTENDENT RODNEY MOSHER TOWN ASSESSOR HELEN OTTE RECREATION DIRECTOR HARRY HANSEN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR CHRIS ROUND LANDFILL SUPERINTENDENT JAMES COUGHLIN DEPUTY SUPT. WASTEWATER MIKE SHAW PRINCIPAL ACCOUNT CLERK-KATE DUBOIS BUILDING AND GROUNDS SUPT. CHUCK RICE RESOLUTION CALLING FOR EXECUTIVE SESSION RESOLUTION NO. 376.99 INTRODUCED BY: Mr. Richard Merrill WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. Theodore Turner RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby moves into Executive Session to conduct interviews, Marilyn Ryba. Duly adopted this 4th day of November, 1999 by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Merrill, Mr. Turner, Mr. Irish, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Champagne NOES: None ABSENT: None RESOLUTION ADJOURNING EXECUTIVE SESSION RESOLUTION NO. 377.99 INTRODUCED BY: Mr. Theodore Turner WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. Douglas Irish RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby adjourns its Executive Session. Duly adopted this 4th day of November, 1999 by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Turner, Mr. Irish, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Merrill, Mr. Champagne NOES: None ABSENT: None PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE LED BY SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE PUBLIC HEARING 2000 BUDGET SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Opened the Special Meeting on the 2000 Budget. I would just like to introduce this presentation this evening, it will be my last which kind of gives me a good feeling, but beyond that I just want to say to those certainly to Kate and to Henry and to the entire accounting staff the work and the effort and the energy that they put into this and the remarkably outstanding presentation that they have prepared for you folks here this evening. We would like to see all seats filled obviously but I think we have a group here tonight that have a real serious interest in economics in the Town of Queensbury certainly in our budgeting process and again before I introduce Henry Hess I just want to say thank you again very much for coming and if at any time although Henry will be leading the way, at any time you have any questions as we go though this I am sure he would be quite willing to take what ever time is necessary for further explanation. So, with that said, Henry it is all yours. CONTROLLER HESS-Good evening everybody. Can you hear me first of all? No body answered. Can you hear me at all? OK. Got a microphone on that we have not used in this room before and I am hoping it works, I will try to speak up so that you can hear me. Does everybody have a budget that wants one, this is the budget document that we are going to be dealing with tonight. On the table if you picked them up there are also a pink and blue sheet, they are in the booklet but they are colored white and when I go through the presentation I tend to refer to them as pink and blue because they have been pink and blue for three years, so that is the way I know that. So, I made some colored ones up. New faces here tonight that we haven't seen in the past couple of years and we welcome you all. Some of the people here were invited, we made an effort this year to invite some of the representatives of some of the organizations that have an interest specifically in the budget that receive either funds from the budget or are associated with the Town in limited kinds of business transactions. We are going to try to accomplish several things within the next thirty or forty minutes. First of all we are going to highlight some important features of the Year 2000 Budget, features that are important to you as taxpayers regarding dollars spent, tax rates and features that are important to the operation of the Town. The taxpayers that attend these meetings tend to fall, I like to say, into three groups. Those that think good government is one that spends the absolute least possible, those that have an issue to advance and do not want dollars to be an obstacle, then the third group, those that measured good government by the value it translates to its taxpayers, that is the group that sort of falls someplace between the other two. I was attending a seminar just a short while ago, I heard a story that really relates well to the kind of financing that government does. Apparently a scuba diver..he was going to go into scuba diving so he went out and spent five thousand dollars on renting a boat and he bought the breathing equipment the wet suit he had everything geared to do this thing right and he gets in his boat and he travels off shore for four or five miles get himself all hooked up jumps in the water and the first thing he looks up and sees is a fellow there with nothing more on than his swim trunks and he is out there doing the same thing. The guy said what is going on here, I spent five thousand dollars to do this and here you are with just the bear essentials and the fellow in swim trunks says but you do not understand I am drowning. So, when we talk about the amount of dollars that you spend and the amount of service you get there is really a balance between the two and I think you are going to find some features in the budget we are going to present tonight that really appeals to all three groups that I described a minute ago. The second thing we would like to do is call your attention to changes that this budget represents. In terms of spending priorities and if you are a frequenter of these meetings and you come every year you will be able to monitor spending trends as well, and we are also going to talk a little bit about the scopes of programs and how they evolved over the years. You know, you see the Town Office Building and you look and you see the senior citizen center and everybody pays their taxes and their water bill and we get associated with many residents in a lot of ways through out the year but when you consider the number of things that the Town is involved in. This is not a complete list, licensing permits, licensing and permits, tax collection, water and sewer, transfer stations, highways, recreation and parks, land use, zoning, planning, maintenance of building and grounds, you as taxpayers have a tremendous asset in the value of your lands and buildings in this town and maintaining it requires a big effort and a big dollar commitment. The Cemetery and Crematory, legislative and judicial functions, a substantial function, personnel we administer a payroll and not just payroll, but personnel, for somewhere between a hundred and forty and two hundred and thirty employees through out the year depending on the season. So, during the course of this evening you might get some sense if you have been here if this is your first time here some sense of the scope of the programs that is operated by your town. Thirdly, we would like to give you a snap shot of the financial health of your town. We talk about fund balances as rainy day funds they are a little bit more than that which I might mention later and contingency appropriations but the money that is budgeted and is set aside to really maintain a financial health a long term financial health. FourtlI and finally we are going to close the meeting in a short while by answering your questions. The slide presentation we are going to see will probably raise more questions than it answers for you. So, the Town Board is here most of the department managers are here and it is on their program that this budget was constructed. I would like to, I would be glad to interrupt the presentation at any time to answer your questions, I will warn you in advance I do not do these presentations often so if you interrupt me I will answer your question but then I will have to start at the beginning again, but if you wait until the end we will be all right. Before we start I want to give some credit, first of all to the department managers this budget belongs to them, obviously the Town Board sets policy on programs and how they are to be funded but it is the department managers that administer the programs and the spending plan and make sure that goals are accomplished and that taxpayers receive full value, first credit. Second credit goes to this Town Board, you know my job sometimes gives me the opportunity to reflects on Bob Hopes one liner, you know, I do not know why everybody gets made a Jimmy Carter he never did anything. You will see during the presentation that this Board did a lot, has done a lot to address some long term deferred maintenance issues and capital expenditure issues that will carry into the future. One of the questions that was asked during the course of the budget process when we were talking about deferred maintenance is just how durable is two coats of paint, and SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Pretty durable. CONTROLLER HESS-We are going to find as we talk thorough we are going to find there is really more than two coats of paint going into maintaining the infrastructure the building and grounds and the programs that have received a big investment from this Town over the years. The Town Board has given this budget very diligent attention. Third I want to recognize the help I receive all year long from Kate Dubois but especially in putting together this presentation. I assemble the numbers I consider myself pretty much the author and Kate is the producer of this slide show and does a great job. So, I thank her for that and I am sure you will appreciate it. And finally I want to give credit and extend my best wishes to the Towns Computer Technology Coordinator our co-worker and my friend Bill Shaw, who is not here this evening. Before we start the slides I want to make sure that each of you have a copy I will ask you one more time if you need a copy of the budget I will be glad to get one out to you. It is a twenty page packet that includes a lot of detail in addition to the budget that you see here in the Clerk's Office there is two hundred and eighty four page it is actually three hundred and fifteen page book of detail, two hundred and eighty four pages of appropriations and thirty one pages of revenue that includes a very detailed break down of the budget. To a large extent I would like to refer to this as a zero based budget, rather than an incremental budget. I am full filling a goal that I established when I came to the Town back in 1997 to over a period of time make more and more lines every year zero based to that we can really identify where money is spent rather than incrementally increasing numbers except where they have to be, such as for electric, the power and so forth we really, we watch that very carefully and this years budget is a highly detailed and if you ever get a chance to take a look at one you will see that we really put a lot of effort into making sure that every line item is justified. If you have your budgets, we will start with the slide presentation. I am not sure that any of us need a geography lesson, pretty much all know where we are. I think we all know that Warren County is a northern most part, the northern most County of New York States Capital Region. It is not just a dormant preferable of the Capital District this is a big State it is a big region this area is an important part of it. We enjoy many attributes here in the north county in Warren County, 187 accessibility, Lake George, the Adirondack Mountains, sought after life style that we all refer to very frequently, a stable political climate I hesitate for laughter need I go on, and especially here in Queensbury, Queensbury is right there somewhere, there it is. We all know that this is not just a bedroom community for the governmental business center to our South but it is growing and vibrant economic center in its own right. I do not know if that looks like Queensbury to you, but when I look at it sometimes that is the way I see it, I maybe a little bias here but you know Queensbury, the Town of Queensbury is a diamond, polished, not without its imperfections but I consider Queensbury a lustrous jewel to those of us that live and work here. We now know where we are, lets talk about what government, spend, a few minutes talking about what governments done over the past year. Some of the accomplishments that have been achieved and this is one and I will acknowledge that this is controversial concept I will justify it to you, your local government has grown to a twenty million dollar business operation. It is not moving too soon nor too fast toward consolidation of some of its operations it is doing so in an orderly manner and I think it is going to pay big dividends as time goes on, centralized purchasing is one of those functions that is being in the process of being centralized. The goals set forth for that are technical compliance with regulations, standardized sound procedures and dollar savings. And note that the order thats in, dollar savings is third, it is important but it is third, it is not the first. When you read the policy on centralized purchasing, some key phrases you are going to see are prevent fraud, favoritism, promote uniform fairness. So, that is an accomplishment it was a well thought out one it was a bold one on this Town Boards part and that is well under the way of being accomplished. Also centralizing fleet management. Your Town has a hundred vehicles in its fleet, fifty in the Highway Department about, approximately twenty five in Water and Wastewater and about twenty five in other departments. What we are trying to do is centralize fleet management is increase the efficiency in fleet usage, or consolidating to some degree as we can one or two a year where possible, consolidating them into a centralized fleet so that motor pool type of thing, that is a slow process but I think that will pay benefits over time. Establish maintenance monitoring scheduling although it does not say so here also program replacement at the optimum value of a vehicle. They have optimum and it is someplace between the day they are new and the day they rust away. We have a way of keeping them until they rust away and what we are trying to do is find the optimum spots so we can replace our vehicles when they have the best value and we can minimize our maintenance costs and maximize their efficiency and their reliability. This year we also in using this centralized fleet management were able to cut two vehicles from the fleet. Technology was an accomplishment that we have achieved a great deal of success over the past year. When we talk about technology we are talking about computers as you know them that sit on every bodys desk more specifically we think of it in terms of voice and data communications. It is not just the computer that works desk top computer we have a lot of communications that take place throughout the Town networking that our Technology Coordinator supervises. Now there for a long time, a couple of years now we have heard the fears of a Y2K melt down and if over the past few months you have noticed less emphasis on that people still talk about it but we do not have the degree of alarm that we had for a while. One of the reasons is that I think a lot of people are paying attention and executing preventative programs like the ones that we have executed here at the town. We are well underway we will be working New Years Weekend, this might be a good time to tell Department Managers that put a little time aside we will probably going to have a program review of all our programs some time over the first or second so that when we come in the third we know every thing works the way it is intended to. Y2K compliance extends not just to our own computer systems we have worry about our own data, our own voice communications, we have to worry about the compliance of our vendors our financial institutions and any other related party that relies on electronic data processing. This past year a Tl communications line was established between Town Hall and the Water Department. Wide area network implementation, system wide upgrades and a continual pursuit through the past year for up to date technology that is both Y2K compliant and the most efficient available to us. The Town has a significant financial system it is one of the, there are a number of aspects to it I mean, I am going to talk to you about the bills we pay in a moment, it is really highly complex and we talk about a twenty million dollar town with a lot of diversity and a lot of things that take place and between the Clerk's Office that accounts for things that come in and the Comptrollers Office that accounts for things that go out it is really a complex mechanism. Some of the things that we have accomplish because every year when you have got twenty million dollars floating thorough there is always a way to improve the efficiency with which you use it. One of the things that we have accomplished this year is initiated balancing advalorum tax with capital expenditures with our Water and Wastewater, primarily the Water Department we have not completed that, that is well under way we have set aside a million one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to accomplish that over a period of future years well on our way this year, it is a technical adjustment one that complies with the law and one that necessarily you are taxpayers would not see but a very critical one and very important to the financial health of the Town. We have established fund balances which are reserved for identified capital maintenance needs and the list is never ending and our goal to achieve more is never ending. You know comparison are difficult and bias, financial comparisons are difficult and bias, we have a tendency as people when we want to justify something we identify the factors as unique and when we want to challenge something we like to identify the factors as businesses. It is hard to calculate in incremental or average cost of many of the tasks or services in any business let alone here at town hall or in the Town of Queensbury but I felt when we went through this presentation I would like to at least give you a couple reference points if you will so that you can leave here, I am going work here with a lot of numbers with a lot of zeros at the end of them but really what is important for you to leave here with is feeling that the Town is well run and we have a handle on what it costs us to do things. I will give you one example, the Controllers Office in an average year, an average this year if you will, will issue approximately eighty six hundred payroll checks we will issue approximately forty four hundred accounts payable checks at an average of three invoices each. That is approximately twenty two thousand two hundred payments we are going to issue this year. We do a lot more in the Controllers Office besides just issue payments, I mean there is a long list of things we do in fact I do not spend much of my time issuing payments at all, so you know there is a lot of other things that get done. But if you divide our total budget of One hundred and Seventy Seven Thousand dollars by twenty two thousand two hundred payments each payment equates to about eight dollars and I think that is very enviable and probably a lot of businesses would like to achieve that degree of efficiency. Like I said we do a lot more things in the office and that is not necessarily a representation. I am not trying to tell you that our incremental costs to issue a payment is eight dollars but it does give you a reference point so that next year we can see whether that improved or if you want to talk about what another town does or another business does there is at least one reference point. As we go through we will have a couple more. Personnel, we have a staff here that ranges between one hundred and forty and two hundred and two hundred and thirty people in a typical year, two hundred and thirty in the summer time, recreation is in full swing. Most of the additional of course are part time but still, part time or full time they still get a pay check each week and we still have the same personnel functions to administer to them that we do the people that work all year. One of the things that happened this past year after several years of attempts the Town instituted performance evaluations for its non union people. Now, I have to tell you I think that is a revelation it is not an easy concept for elected leaders who place a high value on popularity to embrace the concept of performance evaluations, unless it deals with the ballot box. But we did that this year now it is still in the early stages but we are really going to see good benefits from that I believe in terms of moral in terms of being able identify people who are willing and able and desire to aspire to do different things for the town. So, that was a big step this year. Several years ago the town spent a good deal of effort and not a few dollars but more than a few dollars on an employee handbook, a very valuable document the thing is four inches thick and we use that now. Over the past couple of years we have put that in full implementation and not just implementation but actually it is being enhanced. This year a couple major things were done the Family Medical Leave Act policy was re-written and is now being enforced. Position and Salary Schedules have been updated twice in the past year. So, that has become a living document and one that is very valuable not just to the administrator, not just of the Town Board and the Senior administrators but to the Department Managers and even to the Employees, we all know what the level playing field is that we are playing on. Another accomplishment this year was the successful negotiation of a multi-year CSEA contract. A lot of talk in the Town through out every year about economic development this year some major steps were taken to really sink it's teeth into it if you will. The Town Board restructured the QEDC or provided the initiative if you will for QEC to restructure itself I think that is probably more a more accurate statement but none the less it took and initiative and a, buy the Town Board and enabling activity by them if you will for that to occur. Current projects being pursued by either QEDC or the Town Board in terms on its plate of agendas on its agenda for things to be done, Veterans Field Plan the Exit 18 Corridor and the Warren Washington IDA Park Sewer Extension, there is some money in the budget as you will see a little later that deals with some of those issues. Recreation, Recreation is one of my favorite departments in the Town when we think of the town services we generally tend to think of the regulatory ones, Planning and Zoning and Licensing and all the things that go along with it, Recreation and Parks are some that we can all relate to that are service, that is truly that is truly provided for the residents and one that they enjoy as opposed to have to be contended with. We have several like that, the transfer stations are an optional thing that you can either go use or you elect not to. I did not say that right because my next one is Cemetery and I cannot say the same thing about that. But, Parks and Recreation really falls into the category. Here is another average cost for you if you will. Total Parks and Recreation budget for the Year 2000 will be approximately four hundred and eighty four thousand dollars. During 1999 there will approximately six hundred and sixty two thousand hours of organized activity, this is organized activity in the Recreation Department. The average cost of providing an average hour of organized activity is seventy three cents. Now, there is a lot more that they do also, I mean, Harry Hansen he is in there I am not sure what he does, but if you throw Harry in it is still seventy three cents and that does not include the hours that are spent just using the Parks in non organized activity. Our Parks are used by kids countless hours people just, the boat launch site at Hudson River Park, shooting baskets, playing ball, so in unorganized activities there is a lot more but seventy three cents for organized activities. Specifically in Recreation this year they opened Hudson River Park, aquatics programs were increased. That is just a quick SUllUllary of some of the meaningful things that appeared in last years budget that were actually accomplished this year and what I would like to do is move into what the goals similar goals would be for the Year 2000 and what this budget provides for. It is hard to imagine that there is anything left to do but there are. This was an election year, I probably do not need to remind you it has only been a couple of days away, this was an election year so when you read these goals keep in mind that they are intentionally non specific. They were developed by a Town Board that was going to turn over, but yet they needed a goal to set, needed some goals to set out and say we need a general frame work to establish some funding for programs for a new Town Board some of which of these members would have sat on, and one is going to sit and others might have but this is very general and generic in nature by design but none the less it provides a real frame work. Maintain quality services, we will talk about that specifically in a few minutes. Finds ways to become more efficient, improve controls and accountability, maintain financial health, and provide for capital project. You are going to find here that in this budget there are approximately one point four million dollars for different capital projects and deferred maintenance corrections in this budget. So, now we are dealing with 2000, we were talking about what happened last year now we are going to talk about we hope to do next year. Technology, we are going to stay abreast of technology. We still have a few more months to Y2K and we have some more things to do, whether it is Y2K compliant or otherwise. A year and a half ago and in my opinion and in my opinion in the nick of time the town hired a Technology Coordinator and brought into the Town the focus of using computer technology and electronic technology to address the specific needs of our, the missions of our Town Departments as opposed to just having fragmented computer services installed, it has paid big dividends so far it is very complex, we have a very highly complex system I do not mind telling you that. We, I have read a statistic not to long ago where the Office of Technology in Albany considers Town of Queensbury one of the top, ten percent users in the State of technology. We are pleased with that because we are making good use of that, we just do not have the computers on the desk they are being used very efficiently. We now need to complete our Y2K preparation, I mentioned a few minutes ago that we are going to be working over the new years weekend in a very abbreviated schedule, New Years weekend to get, to make sure when everybody comes to work on the 3rd that we are ready to go and when things come on though we will have some semblance of order we are very confident that will happen but we will take that final step to make sure. Other issues for next year are the Govern Software implementation, GIS interface and our Web page continued development. Let me go back and just talk about I will use the word Govern Software implementation this year the Town Board approved upgrading a number of our older software system which are DOS based to a high level graphic user interface system that we will use for Water and Sewer I think the Highway has an element in there the Assessors office and the Community Development. So, this is a major, it is about one hundred thousand dollars investment actually it is over one hundred thousand dollars investment by the time it is done. We are well underway there and that, the supplier of that is called Govern Software. When we talk about Govern it is the vendor that is supplying us software and it is in the process of being implemented now and it will take about a year to get it done. We will have it done just about this time next year. GIS interface is the Geographic Information System that will overlay data onto maps to that the land use departments of the town will have graphic access to information on maps they can pull up for things such as water lines, assessments, any number of things that I could not tell you about, street signs I would guess, probably lighting but when we use two. . ., the Govern and GIS that is what we are talking about. And the web page, the town this year put a web page up it was a good start we need to advance it but our resources have been strained we have one fellow working in government, excuse me, in our technology department. We have a goal once we get Govern started we are going to go in and enhance our Web page but we have a good presence on the Web we just need to improve it and bring it more up to date. Financial again, we are going to continually improve the accountability not just the efficiency but the accountability a whole different topic, the accountability of our various departments. Cash audit, excuse me, audit cash handling procedures and those two go hand in hand, we are once a year, every year we do a, we perform an audit sometimes in the last couple of years we haven't done it internally we do not have the resources, we bring a CPA in to audit some function within the town and this year we will be auditing all departments that handle cash or deposits in anyway. Reduce water, tax rates in the Water Districts and that is another way of saying balancing the tax rates to capital expenditures that is a major goal and we are well on our way to that. There is an additional bullet we could put here, we didn't include it on the slide we probably should have and it is to enhance our cash management investment program to take more advantageous, to take more advantage of the advantageous interest rate curve. Interest rates are changing and they are going up we have an excellent arrangement with our banks that allows us to earn very good returns on our bank deposits and the Town has substantial bank deposits because of its multiple funds and reserves and capital projects and we earn a good return on those the interest rate curve is changing so we are implementing a cash management and investment program that we think will raise our ..from this past year from three hundred thousand dollars by about twenty percent next year. If interest rates go the way they are going now we think that three hundred thousand dollars will be closer to three sixty or maybe even a little higher than that next year. Water Department has a couple of major projects they have to do next year in addition to just pumping water out like it is going out of style we all use lots of it, they are going to paint tanks they are going to install two low lift pumps about a four hundred and fifty thousand, actually it is bigger than that it is about six hundred and fifty thousand dollar investment, some of the money was appropriated this year some of it next year. They are going to upgrade the Shore Colony Water System, they are going to also have a big investment in time in implementing the new Govern Software they are first on the list because they have a water billing that has to go out in January. If you want to add a bullet to this it would be the sale of water, every body is aware of the fact that the town has been trying to sell water to Moreau, has contracts, has contracts with Hudson Falls and it is negotiating with others or trying to negotiate with others to sell water at a price that is fair to the taxpayers that own the plant that we have so that is another bullet that still has not fallen away. . . Economic Development, again, continuing support to the new QEDC operations, support extension of sewer lines to the Warren, Washington Industrial Park and also another bullet here funding other series of programs. The QEDC came up with a very aggressive goal, list of goals that they want to accomplish and the Town Board is working with them and negotiating with them to fund those goals over a multi year period. Assessment has goals of its own, the revaluation project continuing the shared assessor program with the City of Glens Falls, here again implementation of new Govern/GIS software they are a major user of that. Wastewater Department they have got, it is not one of the biggest departments in the Town but probably one of the most important in terms of hygiene. If you have a break and we had one this past year, we all worry about how sewer, how the Wastewater Department is going to take care of it. Extensive root cleaning of sewer lines, they have a substantial amount of money in this years budget to clean root from sewer lines they also will be installing a new billing system. My major concern is you see all the pipes there, if they can keep things flowing the right way and keep it below the ground and get it to Glens Falls sewer station I will be happy. Building and Grounds, we talked I do not have the numbers for you I was going to look it up, somewhere around twenty five million dollars is probably what we have invested in real-estate, it is well maintained we have a good ..department and this year we have made it a point to implement a program office refurbishing plan so that we can assure on an on going every year a block of offices or a specific number of offices will get the carpet they need the painting they need and any other refurbishing that they need to keep them suitable for the people to work there and the taxpayers that come in. The other things under Building and Grounds is construction of storage building, the plan have not been drawn the capital project has not been established yet but funds have been appropriated for a storage building that will take care of our growing need for record storage and also the housing of voting machines. That may break ground this coming year. Community Development it is the term we use to describe the department that does Zoning and Planning and Fire Marshal and the Animal Control Officer, Chris put up a couple plans this year that was adopted by the Board and funded to some degree, bicycle pedestrian plan, Land Trust Administration starting that up it has been funded and Chris department is also very active with QEDC and promoting their initiatives and there is money in here for funding their operation, there annual operation as well as a provision for funding their capital programs as well. There is a list again I think we have talked about all of them I think they are general we have touched on every one there are specific programs in here for each one that we have talked about it is general yes, but it is certainly not without direction. Thought we would never get to the numbers, right? Here we go. I am going to state again that the official budget is the twenty page booklet that you have here it contains a tremendous amount of detail, not line by line detail but a tremendous amount of detail about the mix in the departments and the mix in the funds in the way the Town plans to spend their money. If you would look at the three hundred and fifteen page worksheets, they actually reflect an obsession with detail. We do not have one of those here tonight they are certainly in our offices for you to review. On the table there were a pink sheet and a blue sheet I told you about as we go through here we are going to talk about specific numbers when we get to the end most of the information you really going to need to evaluate what this means to you in terms of what it is going to cost me and where does the money come from is on the pink and the blue sheet and it is the first two pages of your budget handout. We deal with expenditures first, and revenues second. We talk about by function the New York State Uniform System of accounts really gives us just a handful of functions to deal with, we talk about payroll, payroll taxes and benefits are two functions if you combine them together it gives us total personnel expenses so you can always, ok, there is where we come up with our total personnel expenses and it is interesting to note that town wide we spend almost forty percent of our annual budget on personnel expenses. Equipment, debt service, transfers and reserves. Transfer to projects and reserves are three other functions and then there is the other one and it is really a misnomer we call it contractual about the third one from the bottom and that's, it doesn't necessarily mean that there are items that are contracted for and are recurring it just means it is everything else. It is supplies, it's travel, its meetings, its any category that doesn't fall under equipment, personnel, debt service, or transfer to a capital project or reserve. For analysis purposes we account for contractual if you will in dozens and dozens of accounts. When we report them to the State we report them as contractual. But for analysis purposes and for performing our budget we actually break them down into dozens of accounts so that we have a good handle on where that money is actually being spent. Just the fact that we spend probably around eight million dollars in tlIat code doesn't mean that we do not know where that eight million dollars is going. It is well accounted for. Mention one other thing here you are going to see transfers to projects and reserves on the general fund is fifteen percent. There are eight hundred and eleven thousand dollars and it represents fifteen percent of that funds budget and why that's significant is because a little bit later and if you look through your handout you are going to see that it looks like the general funds budget is up twenty percent this year. Fifteen percent of it is right there and it is the capital projects. We said they are putting away two point four million dollars, eight hundred and eleven of it excuse me, one point four million dollars, eight hundred and eleven thousand of it in the general fund and that represents fifteen percent of the budget and so your real general fund expenditures are really up about five percent this year. I need to point that out to you because its the way we account for and can show it to you it needs to be pointed out because I really cannot pull that out and conceal it. Expenses for operating funds and Special Districts, generally speaking on operating fund or special district is a fund that is generally except for lighting, except for lighting districts is a fund that is generally derives its income from user fees. It is looked for tax revenue for the bulk of its revenue. The ones that we deal with here are the Cemetery fund, Solid Waste, Lighting Districts, Wastewater Districts and Water Districts. Two things that I need to point out here there is a bunch of numbers which mayor may not mean anything to you as we get more closer to the end of the summary I will point out the significance of the totals. But, the things that I need to point out to you, you are going to see under Solid Waste on the lower line property taxes twenty thousand dollars, first time you have seen that in I do not know how long, before I started to investigate been very proud in that department for a long time to have it self sustaining. What happened this past year is we, we had an increase in the burnable rate from fifty five dollars a ton to sixty nine dollars a ton when you add three thousand tons time fifteen dollars it comes to forty five thousand dollars and that fund is going to experience a deficiency this year of about forty five thousand dollars. At sixty nine dollars a ton if that is what the rate holds at next year and we are hoping it does because that is what we have budgeted it faces unless a serious, the new Board takes a serious look at revenue generation it is going to experience that again. What we have done this year is we are digging into the fund balance it has a fair fund balance we are digging into the fund balance for part of that but we are also funding twenty thousand dollars of that deficiency through property taxes. First time it has been there in a long time. The other thing I need to point out here are the yellow areas. You do not have to add the numbers up I will just point out to you that the sum of the capital expenditures and debt services on the Wastewater district line approximately equal the amount we are raising for property taxes down on the second line, on the Wastewater line. Under the Water district line the number is not quite as exact but it is what we are working toward. That has been out of balance substantially for some number of years to the detriment of the taxpayers and to the benefit of the water users and over a period of time we are correcting that. Technical correction one you may not care about but very significant in terms of the long term financial health of your water districts. What I have done here we have taken the major appropriations from the funds that really relied pretty much on taxes to fund it the non operating funds if you will, general fund, highway fund and the emergency services fund. General fund are all the general types of things the government operates, things that take place here in the Town Office Building, the Highway Fund everybody knows what that is, the road work, construction, road clearing in the winter and the Emergency Service Fund is the fund that is primarily funded by property taxes almost exclusively and funds the five fire companies and the three ambulance squads that we have here in the Town. This is ranked in terms of dollar amount and coincidentally percentage of total budget by the biggest expenditure at the top all the way down to the bottom. As you might expect and has been for years, highway and transportation accounts for the biggest portion of that, twenty seven percent of the money raised through tax generating funds is spent in the highway. Fire and Ambulance is a substantial amount two point two million dollars. Capital projects this year I am very proud to have that in there at eight hundred thousand dollars, that has been lacking in the past and that is where it should be. Shared services if you take this home if you take one of these booklets home and you have an interest in where these numbers come from shared services are accounts that they start with sixteen on our list of appropriations and they are numbered in there Building and Grounds, Telephones, Computer Technology, things that we really cannot allocate to each and every department because its, they are centralized. Purchasing, the cost of running the purchasing department, they are shared services. Payroll taxes and employee benefits ranks fifth on this line at six point six percent. Staff, generic term item code fourteen if you compare it to your list of accounts, the Town Clerk's Office, Town Counsel, Personnel Administration, Elections are the four major components of what we call staff. Culture and Recreation they head off the seven hundred accounts Parks and Rec. and a couple of other things, Marilyn VanDykes Department the Historian falls under that code and few other things as well. Some of the funds we contract with some outside agencies which we will talk about in a few minutes, also our culture and recreation. The Finance Department the number thirteen codes, its the Controllers Office, the CPA Audit we conduct, Tax Receiver, Purchasing I said purchasing before, actually purchasing belongs here, the Assessors Office they are the major components of the Finance Department. It is more than just the Controllers Office there is a major finance component in town government. Home and Community Services, Chris Rounds Department, Zoning, Planning, Fire, Fire Prevention and Animal Control you legislative, executive and judicial branches are about eighth or ninth on the list. Then we go on down, public safety, misc. expenses, contingency, fourth one up from the bottom. Contingency is a safety valve there are two hundred and five thousand dollars in this years budget which is a typical amount put aside for expenditures you just cannot anticipate early on, you just don't know what is going to happen. We had a sewer break that ended up being very expensive this year, land use issues come up, public issues come up where you might need a surveyor an engineering firm to do some work for you and so these are the kinds of things that contingency is intended to cover. It is a safety valve and a very important one. Transfer to the Cemetery fund, the Cemetery fund is not a self sustaining operating fund, we are going to look at that and try to bring it closer into balance, it will never be in total balance I will tell you because one of the rules of government is that you can have an operating cemetery and you can try to run it self sustaining but as and I do not know the total regulations here but as a Cemetery in your Town becomes abandoned and it is the obligation of town government to pickup the maintenance of that cemetery. So, I think we have nine of those, Rodney? CEMETERY SUPT. RODNEY MOSHER-Right. CONTROLLER HESS-We have nine of those in town that are maintained by Rodney Mosher's Department and a good portion of this money is to maintain those abandoned cemeteries in a dignified way. General Insurance ninety thousand dollars, debt service I would like to point that out your town has virtually no borrowed money in its general fund. Thirty four thousand is our debt service minimal we have a borrowing capacity of around eighty million dollars and we are debt service of thirty four thousand. Your town is very healthy from a debt point of view it has very little debt. That is how we spend it, this is where it comes from. The same fund, General Fund, Highway Fund, Emergency Fund they total ten million six hundred and eighty eight thousand and this is where the money is raised. Sales tax if your predominant funder. This is a retail enforced economy. Property taxes represents around twenty two percent and if you look down to the bottom you are going to see where the property taxes go. It goes primarily to the Emergency Services fund and to the Highway Fund they are the only two users of that two million three that we raise in property taxes, everything else is funded by sales tax or other sources the ..minor sources. In addition to the Emergency Services and Highway fund, Solid Waste and Cemetery have small components that add to that but sales tax we are appropriating a million six this year from our reserves to fund the budget the million six keep in mind only about half of that is really going to fund operations the other half is going to fund that eight hundred and eleven thousand dollars in capital. Weare not raising taxes to do that eight hundred eleven thousand dollars worth of transfers to capital project fund. That is all coming from fund balance. It is an important note. And then we have some minor sources, small amounts of State Aid eight hundred and three thousand State aid some user fees, interest earnings in the General Fund is about one hundred and fifty five there is a lot of interest earnings in other funds but in the General Fund about one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars for a total expenditure budget of ten million six eighty eight in the General Fund. We talk about how important sales taxes are this is the history for the past ten or twelve years of how sales taxes has grown in terms of dollars but also how it has grown in terms of importance to our overall budget. In 1988 sales tax generated seventy four percent of our General Fund expenditure in 1999 it is generating about eighty three percent of our General Fund Expenditures leaving only seventeen percent to be funded from other ways. We are going to sell bumper stickers after the program have you kissed a shopper today? Because that is who really is funding town government here, shoppers and tourists. If you would like to see that graphically the red bars the red colunms represent total revenue or total expenditures our total budgets since 1988 through 1999 the blue colunms represent the amount of those budgets that were covered by sales taxes. In addition to the services the town provides itself it also supports some public service and cultural organizations that enhance our quality of life in ways that our town can not due on its own. I am pleased that some representatives of some of those organizations are with us tonight we invited them and some of them made it I am glad to see that. This is a list of the service contracts that are budgeted for next year. I have made much ado this evening about the money the town has put aside for major expenditures in terms of capital projects, maintenance, improvements, what have you this list totals more than the eight hundred and eleven I am talking about because this gleans some major expenditures some of them not necessarily in terms of dollars, two thousand dollars at the bottom is not a major expenditure in terms of dollars, it is major in terms that it is a new project. It is a new initiative that was undertaken and started. So, even though it is only two thousand dollars that over a period of time if it is continued will become a significant expenditure but this Board has seen it as one that is well worth funding to get it off the ground. Road and Drainage projects five hundred thousand dollars in this years budget to accomplish new road and drainage project, infrastructure projects. Repaint the West Mountain Water Tank two hundred and fifty thousand dollars included in the water department budget to do that in addition to about two hundred thousand that was appropriated in 1999. It is almost a half a million dollars project that is going to fall just short of half a million dollars to get that done. Next year a budget appropriation in the Water Department for two hundred thousand dollars to replace low lift pumps at the Water Plant, a Storage Building we talked about earlier for records and voting machines and other equipment. One hundred thousand dollars in this years budget there was one hundred thousand dollars appropriated last year budget there is two hundred thousand to meet that need with the new Town Board that comes in, in January will decide how that need needs to be met, but the money is there to fund it. Clean and line water mains a hundred thousand dollars in the budget the Exit 18 Corridor Re- Alignment a hundred thousand dollars in the budget, Economic Development projects fifty thousand dollars is in this budget. Townwide traffic flow study, it came up an interest at a board meetings just recently where that became a major interest of certain communities that experiencing commercial growth on our major corridors. The Town has funded that this year to the tune of fifty thousand dollars, recognizing it may not be the total amount but it is also more than a one year project. Root Cleaning and Sewer Line twenty three nine, Land Trust Administration, new project ten, Bicycle/Pedestrian plan new project funded and the treescape project funded. This sheet I told you I would refer to it, it is the blue one, if you have the blue one and you can take this home we can talk to this and I am going to highlight certain things and I will mention a few things about it. It is a very complex thing the main thing about this is it will show you what we are going to raise in taxes and how we are going to fund the rest of the appropnatlOns. It is either the blue sheet or if you do not have a blue sheet it is the first sheet inside your handout. This is a concise summary of appropriations estimated non tax revenue, appropriated fund balance and amount to be raised by taxes for each of the categories of funds that we operate here in the Town. The General fund the Cemetery, the Risk Retention and Highway Fund and the Solid Waste Fund all fall under General total General Operations and when you get your tax bill when you see the General Town Tax that is the amount that is going to be shown, three hundred and twenty seven thousand five hundred and fifty one dollars. If this budget is adopted that is the amount that will be on the tax bill with your apportion based on the assessed value, and we will talk about it in a minute what that equates to in terms of tax rate. Emergency Services fund out of the total budget of two million two forty one we are appropriating one hundred and sixty eight thousand from fund balance, twenty five thousand will be earned in interest and we will be raising two million forty eight thousand nine hundred and eighty four dollars. I will mention right now that is the only tax in the Town that will have a slight increase this year every thing else will be down. Lighting Districts, self sustaining, the lighting districts are still taking advantage of they are still benefiting significantly from an energy audit that was done a few years ago where we received a substantial refunds from Nimo for over charges over a period of Lord knows how many years, and they have substantial fund balances that we are drawing from. So, the lighting district taxes are very low because they are still using up the fund balances resulting from that audit. Wastewater Districts, pretty much business as usual and the Water District except for the Capital Project which inflate, tend to inflate their budget four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in there for that this year being funded as you can see from appropriated fund balance. Here again even though there is four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in capital projects we are appropriating six hundred and eighty six thousand dollars from fund balance so really it is going to have no impact on taxes in fact the net effect on this tax bill will be a negative one. There is the total amount, when you see the four million nine thirty four as total taxes that is all taxes, advalorem taxes special district use taxes and general town taxes. The second sheet in your booklet and a pink one if you have it this is an abbreviated rendition of that sheet and this shows you exactly what your taxes the estimated tax rate will be this year and when I say the exactly, exactly subject to change. Depending on how the assessed valuation come out but basically from the information that we have today these will be pretty close to the tax rates and we do not miss these by much and it also compares them to the 1999 tax rate and gives you a comparison. As you can see the total general town tax will be down two percent from a rate of nineteen point nine cents last year to nineteen point five cents this year insignificant it is two percent it is not an increase. The Emergency Services fund is up two percent it is a twenty three dollar, it is two dollars and thirty three cents on the average house, two dollars and thirty cents is what that tax rate will be, the tax rate increase will be for Emergency Services only. In all other areas tax rates are down. The Queensbury Consolidated that nine percent decrease there relates directly to the balancing we are talking about of balancing the debt service and capital against the tax rate. We are balancing that out that will have a negative impact on taxes this year and we expect it to have a similarly negative impact on taxes probably two out of the next five years. Two more out of the next five years, depending on what other capital projects are in there, because capital project will add to that a little bit. But, we expect that tax rate to decline again over the next couple of years. Shore Colony shows a forty one point two percent decrease in tax rate, that is true, that is going to up however the revenue for that is not going down so the people who live in that district will spend the exact same amount next year that they spent this year they will have higher water bills and lower tax bills and the reason for that is that it is the balancing effect. We are coming into compliance with letting taxes pay the capital and letting O&M letting water users pay for the 0& M. So, that appears to be a significant tax decrease but it will be reflected in higher water rates in that district. Finally, my favorite part of the presentation, probably my favorite analysis the bond between an accountant and his financial statement, this is the one that I feel akin to. This is a snap shot of the Towns financial health, right there. Taking all of the things into consideration, taking our fund balances and what we are appropriating to the our 2000 Budget and what is being left unappropriated which is the last white colunm this is the amount of fund balance we expect to have when we close the books in January. That is not an exact number we have a lot of business to do between now and the end of December and there will some accounting adjustments and there will be some decisions made between now and then that will effect that to some small degree. Basically we are looking town wide to have fund balances of about seven million dollars, we are thirty six percent of our annual operating budget and you can see that varies from well, risk retention is really I do not need to explain that it looks like thirteen hundred or twelve hundred and eighty nine percent fund balance which requires explanation but it is a small number it doesn't really deserve it. But you are going to see in the General Fund the thirty nine percent fund balance very healthy and very significant and some people might say overly aggressive or maybe too conservative or too high. I sat last Friday, I went down to Albany, I had I was invited to a breakfast seminar with a fellow named Nick Purna, Nick Purna is the Head Economist for Fleet Bank works out of Boston, and was recognized two weeks ago by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top five forecasting economist in the Country. He told us how he got that did not think is deserved it so he said but he did not decline it. Very astute man and we talked about it was basically a government audience there we talked about unexpected, rainy day funds and what makes a government healthy, financially healthy and you might expect it is the ability to meet unexpected expenditures the ability to take advantage of unexpected opportunities the ability to withstand dips, temporary dips in revenue an more important than that it is the ability to withstand the normal business cycle that we go through. We are living a good life right now, if you are in the stock market or if you live in Queensbury we are living a good financial life right now and that will not last forever, hopefully the actions taken by the Town Board and the QEDC and all the people around that have an influence on that will make it temporary will make it so we can weather it in good health. But, the fund balances that we keep here are intended to do several things. One it is intended to help us cope with unexpended expenditures they are intended to help us take advantage of unexpected opportunities they are expected to help us weather temporary declines in revenue but more importantly and what I think are the most important they are intended to help us weather the normal economic cycle. So, as unemployment hits and incomes decline among our taxpayers the town does not have to drastically cut services on a temporary basis because our taxpayers because it becomes a burden to the taxpayer. Those numbers are managed very carefully and debated very heavily when we do the budget they are very important in terms of the financial health and terms of the confidence you should have in they way your government is run. They are very important in the credit rating and our cost of capital when we go to the bond markets and I consider that, managing that colunm probably one of the most important aspects of the controllers job. Finally last slide, I think it is the last slide going back to the Year 2000 budget goals we have gone through the general speak of them we have gone back we have talked about the specific numbers now we should go back and just make sure that we have covered all the bases, maintain quality services, you will notice we went through there were no cuts in programs, we maintain quality services there are no cuts in programs. Find ways to become more efficient, technology has got a major investment, centralization becomes still a priority. Two areas that we found that we were ready to become more efficient. Improve controls and accountability, enhancing our financial systems, we are auditing in the Year 2000 our cash handling systems, town wide. Weare beefing up our function of internal audits and we are enhancing our investment plan. Maintain Financial Health. Fund balances, low taxes, and contingency appropriation all three things are accounted for in this budget. Fund balances, low taxes, and contingency appropriations all of which maintain the financial health of the Town. Providing for capital projects making sure that everything is maintained, that the infrastructure is built and maintained that your buildings are built and maintained that we are taking care of the capital needs of the Town well accounted for a million four town wide, eight hundred and eleven thousand dollars in the General Fund and the one item that wasn't on the first list but it showed up as we went through, reduce taxes, in all but emergency services taxes are being reduced throughout the town so everybody tax bill and I cannot say every body tax bill will be lower but generally speaking the average tax rate across the town will be lower than it has been over the past two years. We are open for questions, I will address those that I can, we have department managers to address those that I cannot and we have the Town Board to address those that none of us, the rest of us will want to, we welcome your questions. ASSESSOR HELEN OTTE-Helen Otte, Assessor, Town of Queensbury, I just wanted to quickly address a project that was mentioned earlier in the presentation and that is, excuse my back, I will speak into the microphone. The project is a coordinated assessing unit with the City of Glens Falls. In 1999 this project was begun as an effort at intermunicipal cooperation which I think is a highly desirable if not critical project that the municipalities want to enter into I am honored my department to be one of the first presence's down in the City of Glens Falls and have the presence here in Queensbury here of course continuing. We have worked very, very hard at the project it has been very successful and it has huge pay back to the taxpayers in as far as there is a good program now in effect that benefits people on a one to one basis when they come in to either office now. Toward, the project needs we hope it continues for a couple of more years if not into the foreseeable future, toward that end the State has issued, will issue a check for the Town of Queensbury the amount of eighty five thousand dollars to help fund the project, to fund this inter municipal effort. The project needs funding the project is huge we have a lot of additional demands. I want it said for the records here tonight at this financial meeting that the Town Board gave the Assessment Department twelve hundred dollars of the eighty eight thousand towards the funding for this project at my office level. In the past the Town Board has been very cooperative and very supportive of the assessment effort but I, this is one area where I think you are showing a lack of resolve in offering only twelve hundred of the eighty eight thousand that is coming from New York State. The State Legislature has publicly stated the intent that with the State aid re-imbursement there is a very firm resolve on their part that some of this funding should go toward the improvement of the assessment function in municipalities. The Town in this instance really is not complying with what New York State has asked them to do. So, far there has been no mandates handed down with this State Aid but I suspect that will change in the future and that the State will mandate how these fund are to be disbursed and I think that none of us really want to deal with, we would prefer to do it on a municipal wide basis because I think we know best how to do it. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Henry, can I take a shot at that? CONTROLLER HESS-By all means. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Thank you Helen and I certainly want to complement you and your staff and certainly your office for all that you have done to bring about this intermunicipal better relationship so to speak but more importantly especially for those people who live in Queensbury and whose children go to Glens Falls School and vice verse we have brought, I guess we are in the process of bring as far as an equalization rate between the two communities to that hundred percent and that you need to be complimented for. You know as a matter off act we still have an opportunity here to tweak this budget and I think you Helen need to bring to this Board specifics in terms of beyond the twelve hundred dollars and I guess this twelve hundred dollar number did not really register here at least in my mind as we were going through the process so I would ask you to bring to the Board some specifics that you feel would be in the best interests of your department here in Queensbury and I think the full Board would become willing to hear that. We have got another couple of weeks I guess Henry to tweak this before we adopt it or Monday night I guess is the night we are going to adopt it. CONTROLLER HESS-You are going to adopt the budget on the 15th. I do not know what happens when you close the hearing whether you can adjust it after the hearing is closed or not? TOWN CLERK DOUGHER-Yes you can. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Yea, you can sure. Until we adopt it then there is still some opportunity to do some adjustments. As soon as possible, we would like to take a look at that. Thank you. Yes. Betty. MRS. BETTY MONAHAN-Henry what has been the increase in the assessed valuation this year percentage wise? CONTROLLER HESS-Percentage wise I can give you assessed valuation I do not know what .. MRS. MONAHAN-We have the assessed valuation..over last year I am talking about., CONTROLLER HESS-As a percentage of increase I did not carry that with me I do not know. MRS. MONAHAN-Helen do you know? ASSESSOR OTTE-That is something I do not want to quote Betty just off the top of my head. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Betty I will be honest with you call my office tomorrow I have it also, certainly we can give that to you, we have the numbers but percentage wise I guess you could divide it out anybody here with a calculator, I did not happen to bring my with me and those are big numbers when you get into the billions I begin to lose track of the zeros. We are up some folks you need to know that, significant, I think if you were to look at, if you were to look at the trend Betty, you would find that I have to go back here in my memory you would find that this has not been one of the most significant jumps that we have had given the past five years at least that I am aware of. CONTROLLER HESS-I would call it very, I would call it minor. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-I guess that is my point. CONTROLLER HESS-It's not, it won't, major in terms of full percentages it was minor but I don't know what the number is. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-We have lost a few big ones too, can we say that Helen over the last. ASSESSOR OTTE- Yes, that and the increasing exemptions are eroding the tax base. MRS. MONAHAN-And it looks as I remember right that the mortgage tax is holding just about the steady I do not think there is a big increase in the estimate for that. CONTROLLER HESS-Yes, that is holding steady, the estimate is holding steady it balances, yea. MRS. MONAHAN-Appropriated fund balance for the General fund how does this compare with what you have appropriated last year? CONTROLLER HESS-It is an increase in what we appropriated last year what we, we are appropriating eight hundred thousand dollars specifically for projects that were not funded before, you know when the Board talked it over they in watching the fund balance escalate to some degree I guess simply because their, they have been uncertain to as to how to spend some of the money they have been accumulating. One of the things that happened this year and it is not in the final stages yet, in fact it will also layover for a new Board but we started in May a formal Capital planning process a number of things jumped in the way of it not, one being the political season, another one being the budget season, another one being other things that came along. It is a long process and a very big numbers involved. When you start talking about infrastructure and what the financial needs of the Town are over the next few year. It is not just determining what the needs are it is determining where can the funds come from how much can we fund from fund balance how much can we fund from appropriations and how much can we borrow and cover with debt service. So, its, this year when we got to that stage even though we hoped to have a more compete capital plan the Town Board still said we are going to take some of that fund balance and put it into it. So, the fund balance is appropriation of fund balance is up but it is specifically tied to that eight hundred thousand dollars. MRS. MONAHAN-And I realize that. We are just looking for a comparison about how much we used last year. CONTROLLER HESS-And I did not bring last years budget. MRS. MONAHAN-This one is addressed to the Town Board, solid waste, users fees, those that use should pay, have you looked at what an adjustment would have to be to the bag fee if you did not go to the general tax base to get that twenty thousand dollars. We used to feel that those who took more garbage to the solid waste should be paying for it rather than the people who were being very conservative. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Anyone on the Town Board could answer that question? Betty, I agree with you and obviously I am one of five, as we went through those slides up there you probably noticed that the fund appropriation was going to be twenty, what did you say Henry, twenty four was it? MRS. MONAHAN-Twenty thousand. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-How much? SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Twenty thousand, you also may have seen CONTROLLER HESS-Twenty four thousand appropriated fund balance, twenty thousand dollars in taxes. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-I guess that is the point if we were to take the total fund balance MRS. MONAHAN-Twenty thousand if you put that into a bag fee what would that do to what we pay for garbage per bag? COUNCILMAN MERRILL-We have not looked at that Betty, part of it is recognition that the Town also makes use of the facility. The town has not been paying for disposal of waste from the plant here so to speak, also highway pickup goes over there for nothing, so the feeling was that the Town should be paying a bit of the fee to it. Of course the increase is a reflecting of the increase of the tipping fee. MRS. MONAHAN-I realize what the increase is. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Betty, what I attempted to do early on was to break down each department that does use the landfill at no cost, recreation, you name it across the board. We take our stuff over there dump it at no cost, so obviously the landfill if you will is picking up those costs at the burn plant. So, there is an off set at that point. It was the boards opinion that twenty thousand dollars would cover that rather than going through the bookkeeping effort of doing it but I am still a firm believer that I as a taxpayer am not interested in all honesty in paying for someone who takes their trash to the transfer station while I pay my twenty two dollars a month to have my transported out of my back yard. I intend to agree with you there and if you, again there are still twenty thousand dollars or twenty four thousand dollars left in the fund of balance there so if we were to appropriate that entire amount then obviously there would be no tax in that area either, that is an area that we need to take a look at, I do not know. I can tell you this that it is my opinion that in the future tipping fees will continue to increase. The County shortfall three million dollars is not awful nice to look at either so we are looking at it from a County perspective while at the same time costing the taxpayer of the County those additional dollars while we are trying to balance our budget here in the town. So, there is an awful lot to be done there and I certainly can admit that we have not finished with it yet. CONTROLLER HESS-I would like, let me just mentioned something on that. Two things, one is the question was raised earlier this evening, I mean, one of the Councilman asked me tell me again why we are not appropriating that twenty thousand dollars against the fund balance rather than raising it in taxes? One of the reasons is the uncertainty with the tipping fee next year. What is our burn fee going to be? If it increases again and we have a deficiency next year we would not have a fund balance to draw from they would run cash short and they would really they would have to be in a borrowing situation before the end of the year this way they at least have a head so I think from an accounting sense that is the wise thing to do and then getting back to Mr., Councilman Merrill's comment about the use of other departments taking things to the landfill the only two that would be significant in terms of re-appropriating tax or reapportioning taxes would be Wastewater and Water Departments, any of the other departments that use the landfill it would still show up to the same tax line it would not show up as it would not show up as going to the solid waste fund but it would still show up in the general town tax it would not move it from that line one bit. That is only those two departments that is they paid it would reduce it, those two. MRS. MONAHAN-Fred, while we are on the transfer station, if! can deviate from the town budget for just a minute, you have an act through the legislature to use the County tax as support for the bonds for the trash plant? SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-The intercept. MRS. MONAHAN-If that happens if all the County sales tax money goes for that is it going to be proportioned, in other words what is that going to do to our County tax bill? SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Tomorrow at ten o'clock at the County Municipal Building there will be a hearing on this budget and I am sure that will be discussed at length. For me to give that information tonight, first of all I do not have total knowledge and I would be off the cuff and I do not know whether the media is here tonight or not but did not want to be quoted in terms of where this thing is going to take us. I just do not know, I am sure that if the two Counties approve the Intercept, and I was at a meeting just yesterday as a matter of fact and there were numbers being thrown out by the bond holders of the bond plant there were numbers being thrown out maybe a million seven, our consultant that we have hired to consult with us and to advise us I mean he is looking at something around seven or eight hundred thousand, so there is such a spread at this point in time in terms of he said she said I just do not want to take the risk of stating anything other than there will be a savings and I tell you it will be a minimum of eight hundred thousand. Where this goes from there I just do not know that. But, there are a lot of things that are going to have to happen before we get the two counties to agree that the Intercept is the right thing to do. One of which is we have to give up all litigation and at this stage today, I am not ready to do that. MRS. MONAHAN-Back to the Town budget, Henry I was just looking at the medical expenses and the increase medical insurance and just comparing the different funds and I compared the highway to the general fund part, do we have that many more employees in the highway than we do in the other areas? CONTROLLER HESS-We have a phenomena here that we are dealing with and I will tell you that we just received today the final numbers for next year rates so we were guessing a little bit on the rate of the increase and the distribution of the increase. We have a phenomena that I am not going to try to explain but I will just tell you what it is, that our Union Employees use the Matrix to a high degree which is the most expensive and the HMO are less where our Non Union Employees with is predominately in the Town Office Building and the other Departments use the HMO's to the greatest extent and not the Matrix. I think that's there were some incentives put in the contract that is changing that a little bit but Highway Insurance's will be a lot higher because they are all Union Employees and they and that is where the predominant number of Matrix users are. MRS. MONAHAN-The other thing you mentioned that there is going to be Capital Improvements in the Shore Colony Water District I think one thing we have all been concerned about but I did not see it in the budget anyplace where is that? CONTROLLER HESS-It is there, what we did, they are going to start that expenditure this year so what we did we charged it against this year and reduced out fund balance in next years budget so it is going to be it is a charge against this years the fund balance during this year for a project that is going to carry over into the new year. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-It is also important for you to know that Ralph where ever you are, where are you Ralph, UNKNOWN-He went home. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Well anyway sorry about that, pick on a guy that is not here, we had put this in the budget two months ago realizing that a filtering system was required ..I think there are how many, fifteen users in Shore Colony or something of that number. Somebody else out there can help me with that, but maybe fifteen users. It is not filtered water, again we put this in the budget back when we first started working on the budget a couple of months ago. Ralph got a letter yesterday he came into my office this morning, said Fred, here we have a letter from the Department of Health telling us mandating us, ordering us, to filter water so we are a jump ahead of them and felt pretty good about that to be very honest with you and it is paid for. MRS. MONAHAN -I knew it had to come sooner or later but I could not find it in the budget that was what I was concerned about. I looked at the Planning and Zoning fees, I know that they have not been raised in a long time and I have to wonder if those fees even cover the advertisement that has to go to the Post Star relative to those projects. Has anybody done a cost accounting for that? SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Let me try that one too Henry, we have not costed it out although we have taken a hard look at it on my desk right now is a manual that I will be leaving to the future Supervisor that talks about impact fees and we certainly have the data available to us and certainly we can make some correlation's, relationships to other communities in our actual costs and it is something we will be looking at as far as our goals are concerned I would hope. Now, we, they. MRS. MONAHAN-Henry, did I understand you to say that we are not longer having our complete financial record audit by an outside firm every year as we used to? Why? CONTROLLER HESS-No you did not understand that right, that was not said. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-So, we do. MRS. MONAHAN-...we ought to be audited every year. CONTROLLER HESS-Oh yes. I think what I was saying is we have enhanced our audit program we are not auditing more things than we did in the past, we are going to spot audit some other areas. MRS. MONAHAN-That is in addition. CONTROLLER HESS-In addition to. MRS. MONAHAN-In the general fund expenses here, what are fire safety programs and safety inspections? CONTROLLER HESS-Fire Marshal, fire safety programs is what we used to call Fire Marshal. Safety inspections is Dave Hatin's Department. MRS. MONAHAN-..thank you. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Anyone else? Questions, concerns, answers? COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Fred, I have a couple of questions? SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Sure. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-On the transfer station, Jim, does the City of Glens Falls dump any of their rubbish at the transfer station? LANDFILL SUPT. JAMES COUGHLIN-Yes, they do. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Do they pay? SUPT. COUGHLIN-No. Also I wanted to bring up when Betty was talking? COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Wait a minute, I got another, if! remember correctly we have an agreement with the City of Glens Falls, that any short fall in the budget they pay thirty percent of the shortfall. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-That is correct. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Is that still? SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-That would have to re-surface now, yes, you are absolutely right. SUPT. COUGHLIN-That was back in 1994 when we came up with those figures. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-That is right. SUPT. COUGHLIN-We have always worked at a profit to this point and we still working at a profit but also what was forgotten about is that Adopt a Highway when we pick up all the roads that goes into the compactor and goes to the burn plant plus the man that goes out with the kids and all that al that costs is factored into the landfill budget at no charge. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Anything else, Pliney? COUNCILMAN TUCKER-No. That is it. CONTROLLER HESS-Barbara had her hand up. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Barbara? This lady has studied this budget actually before it was printed. MRS. BARBARA BENNETT-It is nice to see a big turnout here I came up here by Taxi Cab and when the driver turned in to Haviland Avenue he saw this big long line of cars he said seriously what are you going to Bingo? SUPERVISOR CHAMP AGNE- There is a relationship. MRS. BENNETT-The meeting at Ten AM. at the County Building tomorrow. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Tomorrow is the public hearing on the County budget tomorrow at ten o'clock. MRS. BENNETT-I see you have a colunm this year for 1999 budget figures which is a big help we did not have it last year. The County has a budget officer but I did not know we did? CONTROLLER HESS-We do yes, he does not do anything it is Fred. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-But he gets paid for it, I get the Title and he gets the pay. So, I get back at you Henry, how many more weeks do I have to go? MRS. BENNETT-Highway Administration, is down by about forty nine thousand, is that anticipating the elimination of the Deputy? CONTROLLER HESS-Yes, it is. MRS. BENNETT-Ok. How about the Library, is that the Town Law Library or something? CONTROLLER HESS-The library is the Mountainside a small contribution to Mountainside. Is that the name of it? SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Yes, right. MRS. BENNETT-I noticed in the Highway fund, Highway snow is increasing by like fifty nine thousand dollars, now last year we had an easy winter we had excess funds and I heard that this winter is supposed to be like last winter. CONTROLLER HESS-This past winter we spent we are still over, we had more over time spent last winter, the ice, and they spent most of their, I think we were doing statistics we will have to watch that weekly right through April, they spent I think seventy five percent of their overtime budget before April of last year so we are allowing for more for that this year. MRS. BENNETT -You are down on machinery by fifty five so we are almost swapping costs there anyway. CONTROLLER HESS-Yea. They have different machine needs each year and it just fluctuates. MRS. BENNETT-You answered the question on the lighting district, they are all down. CONTROLLER HESS-That will continue for a couple of more years. MRS. BENNETT-Quaker Road sewer is down? Sanitary Sewers and treatment are down? DEPUTY SHAW -She is probably looking at the bond? CONTROLLER HESS-The debt service probably drove it down, debt service is down, yes. The expense for treating sewer none of that is down it must be the debt service. MRS. BENNETT-Hospital and medical insurance those things go up does it have anything to do with changing insurance companies? CONTROLLER HESS-It has to do with negotiating benefits with your employees and it has to do the level of benefits you offer your non union employees. Right now I have on my desk we received our final bills and I analyzed them today and we are going to have a significant increase this year however lower than the average in the industry. I have not had a chance to tell the Board this yet, significant increase lower than the average in the industry. We have good coverage by good company but we also have an analysis of five other companies to compare it to, the Board will be looking at in the next couple of weeks. MRS. BENNETT-They changed didn't they? CONTROLLER HESS-We did, we moved from we added a PPO component from Empire we dropped Kaiser Permanente, we are strictly with Empire now, but we also, I had proposals, not proposals but analysis of five companies on my desk to look at and I will be honest with you as much as our insurance costs there is not a compelling reason to move to one of the others the prices are not that much lower. MRS. BENNETT-It is unusual to see Data Processing down.... CONTROLLER HESS-This past year we did a tremendous amount to get ready for Y2K and that is tapering off now. MRS. BENNETT-The transfer station any reason for it going up? CONTROLLER HESS-Yes. The tipping fee, the burn fee went from fifty five dollars a ton to sixty nine dollars a ton for three thousand tons. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Anyone else? Anything more Henry? CONTROLLER HESS-That is it, that is all I have. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Anything from the Board? Doc Wiswall, anything? Anything from anyone? This is too early, too easy. Yes. Chip. I knew I would rile someone's interest. MR. CHIP MELLON-Chip Mellon from Bay Ridge Fire Company. This question has to do with the Emergency Services Budget. The fire companies are still in negotiations for our 2000 contracts and my question is are these figures final considering the fact that if you are going to adopt this the 15th my understanding is we are not even going to meet with the Board until December sometime, how is that going to effect that? SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Henry you want me to try this one or do you want to go for it? CONTROLLER HESS-No, go right ahead. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Can't shake this off no matter how hard I try. The, we believe, the Board believes that there is certainly adequate dollars in there to cover the contract to it bluntly. There is also a fund balance in there that we could tap if it was absolutely critical and we needed to do that. But, I think at this stage overall certainly looking at you know where you have been where the Town Board in terms of fiscally where we believe the Emergency Services should be going. We think we are covered in very, very well to be very honest with you, unless something happens to the unknown that we are not aware of we believe we are were we need to be. This is not uncommon, as you well know, a lot of times we do not sign a contract with you folks until after January 1st. we hope that is not going to happen this year, but if it does, it does and we will work it through given respect for one another and making it happen. We are also and I think the public should be well aware we are also looking seriously at a third party pay for the EMS so there may be some savings there. If this get implemented and I hope it does I worked very diligently at this over the past four years anyway looking forward to the third party pay which I believe is equity so given that I think we are in pretty good shape, Chip, overall. MR. MELLON-Thanks. SUPERVISOR CHAMPAGNE-Thanks, anyone else? I hope you do not feel deprived that we have not given you full opportunity because once that pen goes to paper next, a week from Monday night I guess it will be all over with but the hooting and the hollering, so speak now or it is all over with. Ok. I just want to pass along again the complements and congrats to those Department Heads and certainly I see a number of folks here this evening from the various committees that serve the town very well and the time and the effort and certainly to the Emergency Services all that you do, I just want to say thank you very much its been my pleasure to work with you over the course of the last this is my sixth year and although I am looking forward to going on to different things I am not so sure that they will be better. It has been a great experience for me and I hope that you feel the same any time that I can be of any help or assistance don't hesitate to call me I am there working with you folks on the Fire companies we are dealing with new trucks we are dealing with hopefully new facility for Bay Ridge in particular and if I can help make that happen I will do that. As Henry alluded to earlier this guy with two coats of paint I came in with that reputation and probably go out with it but I think we have done justice we have held that tax from day one and I promised you I would do that and I do not want to have a swan song here but I want to say Good night, again, thank you very much. Anything else from the Board that might wanted to be added to that? Ok. With that we will adjourn. Respectfully submitted, Miss Darleen M. Dougher Town Clerk-Queensbury