Taxes in Van Buren will likely hold steady in 2015, according to Supervisor Claude Sykes and comptroller Greg Maxwell.
“This is not the final [budget], but it’s going to be close,” Sykes said. “We strive to keep things stable.”
The expenditures for the proposed budget total $4,772,343, which is an $18,396 increase over the 2014 budget’s $4,753,947.
The proposed 2015 tax levy totals $3,165,750, up 0.2 percent from the 2014 levy of $3,158,916.
The current tax rate inside the village of Baldwinsville is $1.62 per $1,000 of assessed value and is expected to increase to by 1.9 percent to $1.65 per thousand.
A homeowner with a house assessed at $100,000 currently pays the town $162.36 and would pay $165.46 in 2015 — “not even [the price of] a Big Mac,” Sykes said. (A Big Mac at the McDonald’s in Baldwinsville costs $4.39.)
For residents who live outside the village in the town of Van Buren, the current tax rate of about $4.39 per thousand is expected to decrease slightly to $4.37 per thousand.
Currently, a Van Buren homeowner with a $100,000 house pays $438.68 in town taxes; next year, that same homeowner could pay $437.44. That is a 0.3 percent decrease from this year.
The biggest cost increase in Van Buren’s budget is road salt, which is up about 25 percent to $231,250.
“They say [the salt mines] never got caught up from last winter,” Sykes said of the increase. He added that the Midwest also dipped into the Eastern United States’ road salt supply last winter, causing greater strain on the availability of road salt.
Maxwell pointed to Van Buren’s overall trend of decreasing taxes over the last seven years.
“Van Buren is very proud that they got their spending under control,” he said.
Since the town has come in under the New York state tax cap, residents are eligible for a rebate check from the state worth 1.5 percent of their previous tax bill.
For Sykes, the key to the town’s financial stability is looking to the future.
“We’re thinking about budget long before we ask the department heads about their numbers,” he said.
“We’re looking at 2016 already,” Maxwell said.
The board will hold a public hearing on the proposed budget at the Nov. 5 meeting.
