By Ashley M. Casey
Staff Writer
The Office of the New York State Comptroller announced last week that 10 villages and two cities across the state showed signs of fiscal stress in 2017. While the village of Baldwinsville was deemed “susceptible to fiscal stress,” B’ville Mayor Dick Clarke said the designation does not mean the village is “falling into the ocean.”
“We had about five projects where we had grant money from the state, and the state is notoriously slow in reimbursing,” he said.
Clarke said the village had to dip into its fund balance to pay for projects that qualify for state grants, such as the kayak launches at Mercer and Community parks.
“That happened to the tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars,” Clarke said.
According to the mayor, the village had closed out its 2016-2017 budget year and was still waiting to be reimbursed for those state grants. He said Baldwinsville has an “odd budget” year because it runs March 1 to Feb. 28.
“It wasn’t too long after the budget closed that we started getting checks,” Clarke said.
Fortunately, Clarke said, the 2017-18 budget’s revenue returns balance to the fund balance.
“At the last count, our revenue was up $200,000 more than expenses,” he said.
Clarke said the “susceptible” designation “isn’t a big deal,” but he added that it is a “good alert” from the state.
“The state worries about people getting behind suddenly using their fund balances,” he said. “I guess if we had a couple years in a row of that, they’d probably come and audit us.”
Clarke said the village is reconfiguring the way the annual budget lists funding gaps such as this so B’ville is not flagged as fiscally stressed.
For more information about fiscally stressed municipalities and school districts, visit osc.state.ny.us/localgov/fiscalmonitoring/index.htm.
