“A thoughtful budget”: $1.15 M keeps taxes steady

NEW SCOTLAND — New construction in town means an increase in library revenues for the 2015-16 budget, so tax rates for the library will stay the same or go down, according to Voorheesville Public Library Director Gail Alter Sacco.

Voters on May 19 will see a $1.15 million library budget that is down by $59 from 2014-15.

Tax rates for library users, based on the towns served by Voorheesville’s school district, will be steady for New Scotland residents, at $1.30 per $1,000 of assessed home value; and for Guilderland residents, at $1.45 per $1,000. School district residents in Berne will see their tax rate decrease to $2.03 per $1,000, a decrease of one cent.

The increase in the number of taxpayers offset the loss of $3,000 in budget revenues, Sacco told The Enterprise. Local taxes are calculated with a formula set by the state, she said.

A consequence of having new houses in the district is that the value of the assessment of the total value of the school district goes up, she said.

“The number of houses sharing in that value goes up, so…the cost remains the same,” Sacco said.

Desk receipts and interest income have gone down a combined $3,350, Sacco said. Desk receipts include money that comes into the library for fines, copies, and lost and paid-for materials, she said. A new email reminder system has kept late fees down, she said, and “certain areas have changed how they do business.” Copy fees for tax-filing season were down last year because more people filed electronically, Sacco said.

The board may look at changing library fees in the coming year, she said.

“We have not increased fines since April 1988,” she said.

Library employee salaries will go up 2 percent, or $6,500, for a total of $635,500, Sacco said. The 21 employees equal 14.6 full-time-equivalent personnel, she said. Additionally, Sacco noted that a change in the state’s minimum wage, which is set to go up to $9 at the end of the year, is accounted for in the proposed budget. Library pages earn minimum wage, she said. Employee benefits costs will go down by $6,659, due to the retirement of one library employee, Sacco said.

The library budgets $50,000 for contractual services, of which a large portion is for information technology services, Sacco said.

“We have public Internet, database resources…a laptop lab from a grant from the Voorheesville Community School Foundation, iPads…The IT person helps with all of that,” Sacco said.

Also included under contractual services are auditing, payroll service, the library’s archivist’s salary, and legal costs, she said.

“It’s a thoughtful budget,” Sacco said. “The trustees have worked hard at increasing and enriching services that are important to the residents, and keeping costs under control.

“They’re very mindful,” she continued, “that people are paying a lot in taxes, but also that the library is a jewel that they are trying to maintain and enrich.”

More New Scotland News

  • “If this were coming in for an initial approval, we would have to look at the noise implications for SEQR. We would have to try and remedy those noise implications, and that’s effectively what we're trying to do,” village attorney Rich Reilly said on Feb. 27. “And for an environmental project, we don’t actually have to own it. It just has to be sponsored by us.”

  • Machines could be seen in the village this past week digging along CSX’s rights-of-way and in the area of the Voorheesville Post Office between its parking lot and the railroad tracks, where a group of trees were felled. 

  • During its March 13 meeting, the town board agreed to an April 10 public hearing for proposed Local Law E of 2023: Regulating Battery Energy Storage Systems and to a special meeting to present the town’s new resource inventory project. 

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