By Ashley M. Casey

Staff Writer

The village of Baldwinsville’s proposed budget for 2017-18 is now available. The budget’s general fund expenditures total $4,328,035.64, which is down about 0.92 percent from the 2016-17 adopted budget’s $4,368,020.03.

“We didn’t jump spending. We’re pretty frugal in some areas,” said Mayor Dick Clarke.

Clarke said health insurance is a major factor in the budget. The village will spend about 14 percent more on health insurance in the 2017-18 fiscal year than in the current year.

“We have it budgeted for about $70,000 more than we had it last year. The health insurance is skyrocketing,” Clarke said. “I’ve tried to make it clear as everybody is making their budgets the tax increase cap was eaten up by that [insurance increase]. The department heads were pretty thorough in keeping things down.”

Clarke said another factor in the village’s expenditures is the Baldwinsville Police Department’s salaries. He said the salaries are still being negotiated, but the proposed budget showed a roughly $50,000 increase to $902,436.

“They’re in a budget negotiation now, so I don’t know what they’re going to end up,” Clarke said.

This year’s property tax increase cap is 0.8 percent, Clarke said. The tax levy has been calculated at $2,467,858.33, which is about 5 percent less than the anticipated property tax revenue for 2016-17 of $2,608,248.09.

As for other revenue, Clarke said building permits are up because of development such as Aspen Springs and the Landings at Meadowood, the luxury apartments at the former Tri-County Mall.

“That’s a little bit of a boost for us,” Clarke said.

The village is ramping up its street maintenance projects, budgeting $116,000 for the coming fiscal year. Clarke said Central New York’s fickle weather is hard on the roads, so village engineer Steve Darcangelo wanted to start repaving more streets to “get ahead of the deteriorating streets.”

Clarke said the Department of Public Works can repave three to four streets per year on the current budget.

“If we can do five, we can get ahead of it,” he said. “If we don’t start doing more streets, we’re going to get into a cycle where we’ll never have a year where we’re not doing streets.”

Fortunately, the state will provide $110,000 in Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS) funding, but Clarke said Gov. Andrew Cuomo has declined to increase Aid and Incentives to Municipalities (AIM) state aid.

“We rely on people like Sen. [John A.] DeFrancisco for grants so we can keep up our waterfronts,” Clarke said.

The public hearing for the budget opened at the Jan. 5 board of trustees meeting and will continue at the Jan. 19 meeting, when the trustees expect to vote on it. The full proposed budget is available at baldwinsville.org.