Lysander — Taxpayers in the town of Lysander could see their property taxes dip by 18 percent next year.
According to the preliminary 2016 budget posted on the town’s website, comptroller David Rahrle planned to appropriate $215,000 of the town’s $1,690,000 fund balance to keep tax rates stable, but Supervisor John Salisbury said the board may use more of the town’s fund balance — its “rainy day fund” — to offset the tax levy.
“I feel that we could safely look at the use of the fund balance that would reduce taxes by 18 to 21 percent,” Salisbury said.
Currently, the town’s fund balance equals about 32 percent of the 2016 expenditures. The Office of the New York State Comptroller considers a fund balance equaling less than 10 percent to be “very low” and less than 20 percent to be “low.”
“I believe that a fund balance should be about 20 percent,” Salisbury said.
Salisbury said reducing the fund balance to 20 percent of expenditures would allow the town to put $755,000 against the tax levy, which stands at $2,871,832, according to the preliminary budget. This would bring village taxes down by 36 percent, reduce highway taxes by 7 percent and bring the part-town taxes down by 38 percent — an overall average tax reduction of 18 percent.
Should the board agree to Salisbury’s 20 percent, that would leave $935,000 in the fund balance.
“We want to take care of the residents — the taxpayers — but we also don’t want to cut short those who are preparing the 2017 budget,” Salisbury said.
Councilor Bob Geraci, a retired Onondaga County Parks commissioner, said he recalled that Onondaga County kept its fund balance around 10 percent of its expenditures.
“There’s no magic number,” he said.
Salisbury said Lysander’s uptick in fund balance this year can be attributed to the town receiving $76,000 from Onondaga County for snow removal and the sale of the Lysander Ice Arena, which added $255,002.45 to the town’s coffers.
continued — Geraci said the town no longer is making bond payments on the ice rink, which adds to the fund balance as well.
Geraci said he is waiting to see if the increased fund balance is a one-time occurrence or if it’s the beginning of a new pattern.
“What happened in 2015 that gave us this windfall?” he said. “If everything stays the same, what’s 2016 going to look like?”
Geraci said the answers to those questions will determine his opinion on how much fund balance to appropriate toward lowering taxes, but he wants to look to the future as well.
“I’m not going to saddle anybody with [creating] a 2017 budget — myself included — where we shot ourselves in the foot,” he said.
While the fund balance discussions began before the election, board members say it’s not a political stunt.
“This is not a political thing — I hope it’s not — it’s ‘let’s get the calculator out,’” Geraci said.
According to the preliminary budget, Lysander’s expenditures will total $4,670,348, a 5.9 percent decrease over 2015’s total appropriations of $4,963,026. The preliminary budget can be viewed at bit.ly/lys2016.
The town board will hold a public hearing on the budget at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5.
