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Tamara Branson

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File photo

By Samantha Rutt

Brookhaven Town Board held a public hearing on Thursday, Nov. 9, to consider the 2024-2028 Preliminary Capital Budget, exclusive of special districts.

The Preliminary Capital Budget is a plan for capital expenditures, which are projects expected to have a useful life of more than one year. The budget includes projects such as road repairs, parks improvements, building renovations and landfill expansion.

The town’s commissioner of finance, Tamara Branson, opened the hearing by presenting highlights of the 2024 preliminary operating budget. The total appropriations for the operating budget amount to just over $335 million. This represents an increase in spending of 1.6%, with a rise in the town property tax levy of about 1%. 

In her presentation, Branson noted the preliminary budget will use no fund balance to balance the budget in the seven major tax districts. Outgoing town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) — who is leaving office later this year to become Suffolk County executive — praised the budget.

“No fund balance has been used,” he said. “It’s all structurally balanced,” adding, “I think that’s important because some people lose that. Sometimes, you see towns using the fund balance or the reserves to balance a budget. We have not done that for years.”

The finance commissioner mentioned that the preliminary budget complies with New York State’s 2% levy cap, the town’s Tax Rate and Debt Management Cap and all fund balance policies adopted by the Town Board.

Branson’s presentation also noted no reduction in constituent services or total full-time staffing. The presentation further pointed out that the preliminary budget would lower property taxes across the nine ambulance districts by a combined 4.6%.

In the preliminary operating budget townwide summary, Branson noted the tax levy to be almost $195 million. Contrarily, to help balance the budget, the non-property tax revenues will equate to $140 million. To this, the finance commissioner commented on the work of the town Finance Department to help stabilize the budget.

“This is the area we have all been working on for the past decade,” Branson said. “To grow the non-property tax revenues.”

Romaine emphasized the importance of generating revenue from other sources, such as renewable energy.

“We want to encourage revenues from other sources, like solar,” he noted. “The more we grow non-property tax revenue, the less people have to pay — or the less we have to raise property taxes.”

Property taxes hold the most significant of the six major budget funds, supporting 54.5% of the total revenues. Second to property taxes, the town’s landfill, recycling and sustainability management contribute 22.3%. Building, fire prevention, and planning/environmental comprise the next biggest portion at 12.7%. The remainder of the total revenue includes parks, franchises, mortgage tax and state aid.

The preliminary budget’s planned expenditures are dedicated to employee compensation, employee benefits, contractual and equipment, and debt service. Romaine commented on the reduction of debt service, noting that the percentage of the town’s expenditures on debt service has decreased by 5% in the last decade.

The budget will feature new bond and reserve-funded projects totaling $47.9 million. Most of this sum will be allocated to highway development and improvement, focusing on roads, drainage, traffic safety, and updated machinery and equipment.

The remaining funds will support other projects such as parks and recreation facilities and equipment, open space preservation, public safety, planning and environmental, and landfill infrastructure improvements.

According to Romaine’s report of Sept. 29, the operating budget “reduces landfill revenues to reflect loss of volumes in 2023” and “grows the Landfill Post-Closure Reserve by $1 million to an anticipated $26 million.”

“I think this is a good budget,” the departing town supervisor indicated. “It is a very stable budget. It holds taxes very low — far below the rate of inflation — and allows us to move forward into the future.”

The board will consider the 2024-2028 Preliminary Capital Budget, exclusive of all special districts, during a public meeting on Thursday, Nov. 16.

To view the full hearing, please visit brookhavenny.gov/meetings.

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The Town of Brookhaven Town Hall. File photo

Though Brookhaven Town has a structured financial path through 2021, much of it depends on where the pandemic goes in the opening months of next year. The town is also hoping for federal reimbursement of millions of dollars spent in both pandemic and storm response.

The town held a public online Zoom hearing for its $307 million budget Nov. 5. During the hearing Tamara Branson, commissioner of finance, said the biggest increases are in the form of a $2.34 million general fund property tax increase. This is being offset slightly by highway taxes, leading to an annual tax increase of a little under $9 for the average homeowner. It also remains under the 1.56% New York State tax levy cap. Refuse and garbage will remain at $1 a day for a single-family home at $365. There is also a 3% contract increase for ambulance districts as with the pandemic “we felt they needed a little extra money this year above and beyond the 1.56% property tax cap,” Branson said.  

The new budget also has to assume the government will resume normal operations starting the second quarter of next year, though that remains subject to any future surges of COVID-19.

The town did not use any 2020 fund balance to fill in the gaps of the 2021 budget, as “we have a lot of risk to the fund balance already,” she said.

Matt Miner, chief of operations, said the town has focused on not using any fund balance to balance the budget, saying they want to “live within their means.”

“We do have fund balance should there be an unexpected emergency,” he said.

The town laid out the costs to deal with the pandemic, along with other natural disasters. The town anticipates a cost of $4 million to retain certain employees at full salary during the pandemic, namely those who were unable to work because of the mandated 50% workforce reduction. Another $1.5 million was used for contractual expenses related to the pandemic, which includes mitigation efforts to reduce the spread of the virus. 

In terms of storm response, Brookhaven expects a cost of approximately $14 million to both prepare for Tropical Storm Isaias and remove debris from people’s homes on practically every residential street within the town. Another $15 million is approximated for tree stabilization after the storm had passed.

Branson said COVID contractual expenses are ineligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency aid. Miner later clarified there was still a question of what other expenses the town can expect to get reimbursed by FEMA.

There is another near-$30 million for other grant awards that the town has to advance, though those funds are expected to be reimbursed by the granting agencies.

In addition, the town is reducing its snow removal budget by $1.2 million, saying it has another $5.4 million left in the snow removal reserves for any major winter issues. 

“Preservation of fund balance from a budgetary point of view was not an option, given these risks that we have to fund balance as we move into 2021,” she said. 

Still, the 2021 budget does maintain constituent services through some reorganization. Department revenues are being reduced by $9 million compared to 2020, though some is offset by $5.5 million in spending reductions. The rest has to come from property tax increases.

Other revenues, including from the landfill and recreation fees, are down across the board. 

Brookhaven is set to vote on its 2021 budget at its Nov. 19 meeting.

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Ed Romaine. Photo by Kyle Barr

The Town of Brookhaven is proposing a $312.9 million budget that Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) called “a taxpayer’s budget.” The proposed budget is a near $10 million increase from last year’s $302 million, but officials say there will only be a minor increase in taxes.

In a budget media briefing meeting Sept. 30, officials said there will be a small increase to property taxes, but are looking to end deficit spending, reduce debt and restore surpluses. The 2020 tentative operating budget of $312,868,413 is not set to dip into the town’s fund balance, essentially its rainy day bank, for the second year in a row. The new budget stays at the 2 percent state tax levy cap.

In 2019, the town did not appropriate any use of its fund balances, effectively the rainy day funds in case of need for emergency spending. This is compared to nearly 10 years ago during the Great Recession where the town was using approximately $28.5 million in fund balance to balance the budget.

The town is also looking to decrease debt, with new capital projects coming in at $43.9 million, which is $14.6 million less than 2019. With the budget, the town is looking to eliminate the current $15.8 million pension debt and eliminate the $30.1 million in “pipeline“ debt, or the extra money left over from the close of bonded projects, either unused or unappropriated.

“It’s move it or lose it for pipeline debt,”

– Ed Romaine

The new operating budget also sets aside $1.6 million additional funds in the post-closure landfill reserve. The town’s landfill is set to close by 2024.

The 2020 tentative capital budget sets up public improvement projects established via bonds and reserves. This includes $26.4 million for the Highway Department comprising road repairs, drainage, traffic safety, facilities and machinery/equipment. This is in addition to a $5 million increase for road resurfacing in the operating budget from $10 to $d15 million.

“That’s part of the supervisor’s commitment to spend $15 million a year in road resurfacing,” said Matt Miner, town chief of operations. “This is the first year that will be going into effect.”

Those funds do not include funding from New York State, especially the Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program — known as CHIPS — from the state Department of Transportation, worth on average about $4.5 million to the town, according to officials.

“The Highway Department will have sufficient funding, far in excess of what they’ve had in the past years,” Romaine said.

In attempts to reduce debt in a faster manner, the town has looked toward 12-year loans instead of 20-year loans. Brookhaven officials hope to reduce overall debt to $20 million by 2021 from $600 million at the end of 2018.

Despite a complete restructuring of the town’s garbage and recycling apparatus, the annual cost for garbage pickup will remain flat at $350 for a single home, with each home on average getting around 171 pickups per year.

Romaine said the town has looked to reduce the amount of revenues gained through property taxes. Currently property tax makes up 53.3 percent of the 2020 tentative budget.

Commissioner of Finance Tamara Branson said the town has looked to focus on getting grants instead of spending through capital expenditure involving tax-raising initiatives.

“We have 50 grant projects that are public improvement projects,” she said, adding that the town has received grant funds of $63.2 million. 

Elected officials will also see a small raise in annual pay. Council members will receive a $1,446 increase to $73,762, while the supervisor will be bumped by $2,398 to $122,273. The highway superintendent at $121,515, town clerk and tax receiver will each receive around $2,000 in increases. Elected officials have been seeing an approximate $2,000 increase in pay for the past few years.

The new budget went before the Town Board for preliminary adoption Oct. 3. A public hearing on the budget will take place Nov. 7, but town finance officials said they don’t expect the budget to change much between then and now. The full budget must be adopted by Nov. 20.

 

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