Cicero — While the Cicero Town Board won’t receive a raise next year, spending is up more than 9 percent in the 2016 budget, which the town board approved Nov. 18 in a 4-1 vote.
Expenditures (excluding special districts) for 2016 will total $10,900,514, which represents a 9.23 percent increase over the 2015 adopted budget’s $9,978,977. Including special districts, the budget totals $13,046,026, an 8.2 increase over the total 2015 budget’s $12,057,166.
Several factors account for the increase in spending. The building budget will increase from $137,100 to $238,600, with $40,000 earmarked for the renovation of the former South Bay Fire Department Building and $58,000 for a pole barn for the parks and recreation department. The town has also set aside $3,000 each for the highway garage and the police building. The police department’s equipment budget has skyrocketed from $6,000 to $48,000, while police overtime has gone from $40,000 to $75,00. Meanwhile, the highway department’s repair budget has risen from $680,696 to $722,765.
In other expenditures, the town is nearly doubling its computer maintenance/support budget from $6,500 to $12,000. Cicero will spend $150,000 on legal fees next year, compared to $100,000 approved for 2015. The parks budget will go from the current year’s $272,041 to $360,684, largely due to increases in equipment and improvement/rehabilitation costs. Finally, the town will spend $170,000 on a property on Route 31 for a new highway garage.
The town will appropriate $483,194 of its fund balance. The tax levy is $8,318,500, an 11.62 percent increase over 2015.
The tax rate for 2016 is about $2.40 per $1,000 of assessed value, compared to the 2015 tax rate of about $2 per thousand. A resident whose home is assessed at $100,000 can expect to pay $240.35 in taxes next year, which is $42.35 more than the current year.
“Some of us are seeing numbers in our sleep,” Supervisor Jessica Zambrano said of the budget process coming to an end.
continued — Councilor Mike Becallo cast the only dissenting vote.
“There’s no real cuts in this budget,” he said. “Cicero’s way to combat [increasing costs] is by borrowing millions and millions of dollars as well as using the fund balance.”
Councilor Mark Venesky asked Becallo how much time he spent with department heads or town comptroller Shirlie Stuart going over the budget.
“I don’t trust her numbers,” Becallo said.
Former supervisor Judy Boyke questioned where the town would get $7,000 to pay for landscape architectural design and engineering services for the former South Bay Fire Department building, where the town intends to move the police and justice departments next year.
“Where is this money coming from? It’s not a budgeted item,” Boyke said.
“We don’t have the option of taking $2.3 million out of the fund balance like you did, Mrs. Boyke,” Venesky said.
Zambrano said Stuart told her the money for the engineering services would be available by the end of the year out of appropriated funds. In order to qualify for a $250,000 Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) grant, the town first has to acquire and evaluate the building, Zambrano added.
