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Village mayor unveils tentative $10.6M budget

The tax rate in Greenport Village will increase by just over two percent as a result of the tentative village budget proposed by Mayor George Hubbard Jr., which was released Wednesday.

“There’s a modest tax increase in it, of 2.09 percent,” Mr. Hubbard said at Thursday’s village trustee meeting. “If fits under the tax cap. We have money in there for two additional part-time traffic control officers to try and take care of that issue.”

The $10.6 million budget is up by 3.66 percent in spending, or $375,720.

Mr. Hubbard said afterwards that people complained that there were no TCOs on duty on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so the village is trying to get someone on duty for at least part of every day.

The tax levy increase in the 2019-2020 proposed budget is 3.83 percent. The state tax cap applies to the tax levy and is at two percent this year, although it allows for a number of exemptions, such as tax base growth. Officials said the village budget does not pierce the cap.

A budget hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, April 9, at 6 p.m. in the Old Schoolhouse museum on the intersection of Front and First streets.

“We also have money for a building inspector, but not a senior building inspector,” Mr. Hubbard said. “It will just be someone off the civil service list and we will probably have to train that person.”

The village has been trying to get a full-time head of the building department for more than a year, according to the mayor.

“We had tried getting a building inspector last year but nobody was on the list and everybody at the top of the list had already found jobs,” he said. “So we’re looking to advertise that position. We’ve been doing a lot with part-timers, but we’re looking to get one person full-time to be the focus person.”

Mr. Hubbard said there also are two people retiring from the highway department as well that will be replaced.

“The budget went up a little bit because we needed to do some bonding for the road repairs last year,” he said.

The proposed 2019-2020 budget shows about $91,000 in debt service for road improvement projects.

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