By David Tyler
Keeping taxes under control at a difficult time is the town of Manlius’ top priority during a challenging time, said Manlius Supervisor Ed Theobald when he made brief presentation outlining the tentative 2021 town budget on Wednesday Sept. 23.
“It is a trying time for the citizens of our town and we need to do all we can to keep their taxes low,” he said in presenting the first draft of next year’s spending plan.
The tentative budget shows a 1.44% tax rate increase for the full-town budget and 1.76% tax rate increase for the part-town budget.
Spending is up about 3.75% from the 2020 budget, but that number is skewed by the additional police presence in the schools, which is paid for by the school districts, Theobald said.
Outside of the SIRO and SPO programs, spending on police is slated to increase 2.5% and the town highway budget is scheduled to increase by 1%.
“It’s a very tight, but responsible, budget, and it needs to be,” Theobald said.
The town will continue massaging the budget before presenting the preliminary budget. A public hearing on the preliminary budget is expected to be held in late October.
