The town of Lysander’s tentative budget for 2016 could drop nearly 7 percent over the current year’s budget.

Preliminary numbers for the general, part town and part highway town expenditures for the 2016 total $4,626,535, which represents a 6.78 percent decrease over the 2015 adopted budget of $4,963,026.

The total expenditures originally reported by the Messenger, $5,640,969, included expenditures for special districts. We regret the error.

Deputy Town Clerk Elaine McMahon presented the budget to the town board at its regular meeting Monday, but Comptroller David Rahrle gave town board members a brief overview of the budget at the public work session preceding the public meeting.

The tentative budget does not include figures for the tax levy, the tax rate or appropriations from the fund balance because such numbers could fluctuate throughout the budget process.

“I don’t want to get everyone’s shorts in a knot about tax rates in the first pass because we all know it’s going to change,” Rahrle said during the work session.

The town board’s first budget work session will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, in the conference room at the town hall.

Board votes to override tax cap

Despite two residents voicing their dissent at the public hearing, the town board voted Monday to pass a local law allowing them to exceed the state’s tax increase cap of 0.73 percent.

Resident Bob Braun asked if the budget’s tax levy had already exceeded the tax cap. Supervisor John Salisbury told him he did not yet know if the town would have to exceed the tax cap.

Braun also asked why the board chose to pass the law now instead of working through the budget and seeing if they actually needed to increase the tax rate.

“Isn’t the spirit of the law, though, you need to come and tell me why you need to go over the tax cap?” Braun said. “You don’t even know, and you want to pass the law so I can give you a blank check.”

Town attorney Tony Rivizzigno said the tax cap law is a “safety net.”

He said the law generally is passed early in the budget process because the town is required to publish an announcement at least 10 days before the public hearing needed to pass the local law. If the board waited until it finished the budget, it likely would run out of time to announce and hold a public hearing to vote on the law.

Rivizzigno said other area towns, such as Manlius and Clay, have already passed local laws to exceed the tax cap.

“I don’t think anybody up here … has any intention of exceeding the tax cap,” Councilor Bob Geraci said. “This is a caveat; this is a failsafe mechanism.”