Put Valley Cuts Tax Hike in Half

By Holly Crocco

The Putnam Valley Town Board has whittled its preliminary 2027 budget down from the originally proposed 7.2 percent increase, to about a 3.34 percent increase.

“The work that’s been done is good work,” said Councilman Louie Luongo at the Oct. 21 Putnam Valley Town Board meeting and budget hearing. “We’ve gotten it down. I don’t know that we can’t do a little bit more also with the other revenues that are possibly out there. We still have more work to do, but I want to thank everybody involved in this. To get it to where we are from where we started was a big leap.”

CJ Brooks thanked residents for their communication and cooperation.

“This is an open and collaborative effort because this is your money, your tax dollars, and we need to make sure we’re accounting for it properly and that everyone understand the process,” he said. “I’m happy with what this looks like, especially from where we started.”

Supervisor Alison Jolicouer said adjustments were made to the highway and parks department budgets, as well as workers’ compensation, where $35,000 in savings was realized.

In addition, all the town board members agreed to a moratorium on their salary increases. “We all agreed to forgo our 3 percent increase,” said Jolicouer. “It’s nominal but… every little bit helps.”

Also, the town is in discussion with Verizon regarding a new franchise agreement in which 5,000 homes will be able to get cable television through Verizon FiOS, which allowed the town to bump up that revenue line a small amount.

Resident Patty Villanova thanked the board for tightening up the overall budget, but criticized town leadership for the 58 percent increase for the fire district, especially when it’s unknown how much a new firehouse is going to cost.

“You just keep on giving the fire department whatever they want,” she said. “There is zero concern for the taxpayers of this town… This is obscene, when we are struggling, to give the fire department a 58 percent increase. People are not going to be able to pay their heating bills.”

Maria Angelico, the town’s director of finance, explained that the fire department only requested the contractual 2 percent increase, which is about $27,000.

However, $450,000 was taken out of the fund balance last year, even though the expenses remain the same, and it has to be returned. This was to pay for costs related to service awards and disability insurance, which is required by the state.

“The $450,000 isn’t to replenish the fund balance, it’s to get the expenses back to baseline,” said Angelico.

Additionally, $210,000 will, in fact, go to replenish the fire district’s fund balance, to get it to a level requested by auditors.

All this brings the fire protection budget to about $1.87 million.

Putnam Valley Ambulance Corps Chairman Michael Moculski implored the board to consider it’s requested 2 percent increase, which equates to about $6,000.

“Six-thousand dollars will pay for about six days of the salary for the paid EMTs that we hire to staff the ambulance,” he said. “We pay about $1,000 a day for that. If you extrapolate it over a year, that amounts to $260,000 that we need just to pay the EMTs for the year. We’re using it for the safety of the citizens and their visitors to the Town of Putnam Valley… If we do not get an increase, we are not going to be able to pay those people after Jan. 1.”

The preliminary budget can be viewed at www.putnamvalley.gov.