How Much Will Your Village Taxes Go Up?

by Kathy Savolt -

The June 1^st start to the 2026-27 fiscal year is fast approaching and that means it’s budget time.  Villager Kathleen Gill presented the Tentative Budget to the Board of Trustees (BOT) at their meeting Monday, March 23, 2026.  See presentation HERE.

The proposed tax increase is 2.53% which is under the New York State tax cap of 2.79%.  In her budget message (see entire 260-page Tentative Budget HERE), Gill claims to have reinstated sound fiscal management practices, including accurate revenue projections, proper procurement for purchases of equipment and supplies and difficult decision-making related to staffing while preserving essential services.  This is in sharp contrast to a year ago when Gill discovered questionable financial maneuvers in the past which required that the tax increase exceeded the cap as corrective steps were taken to undo same.

The Budget Process

Using a common budgeting process, Gill first identified mandated, non-discretionary increases to the base budget.  Items like pension and health insurance were identified and summed to over $525,000 in added expenses to this year’s budget.  Gill then projected changes to base costs such as utilities, insurance and bond payments, as well as negotiated salary increases and making good on her promise to end the dubious practice of charging management salaries to the Sewer Fund.  This category of changes added to over $770,000, for a total of more than $1.2 million in new expenses, or 2.4% of this year’s budget.

Expenses are offset by revenue with real estate taxes as the largest revenue source.  There are, however, other revenue sources collectively known as “Revenue Other Than Real Estate Taxes”.  This year, some revenue is trending higher than expected and that increase, just under $950K, was used to estimate revenue for next year but still leaves a gap between expenses and revenue.

Closing the Gap

Budgeting always includes making hard choices and Gill and the staff developed a list of items that could be eliminated or deferred.  Notably, the Village Engineer and Assistant Engineer positions ($98.8K) were defunded as was a position for an Administrative Intern ($54.6K). Positions were cut to part-time and at least one full time position will now be shared between two departments.  With this year’s addition of an in-house salaried Village Attorney, $46,000 in legal expenses was removed from the base budget.

There are also additions that reflect the administration’s priorities.  For example, Gill is recommending centralizing the purchasing function and hiring a Purchasing Agent.  Currently, department managers do their own purchasing.

These additions and subtractions resulted in an almost $109K reduction in the budget.

The General Fund Budget

The 2026-27 total budget for the General Fund is shown in the table below.

Appropriations            $50,248,700

Revenue Other than

Real Estate Taxes           17,399,232

Tax Levy                        $31,950,468

The value of the Village real estate has also increased with the 2026-27 value now at $5,450,327,838, an increase of $112 million, or 2% of this year’s valuation.

Using an assessed value of $800,000 for a home, the Village estimated the tax increase to be $106.23/year.

Please note that Village taxes are roughly 25% of your total property tax bill with the school taxes the largest percentage.

Next Steps

By law, the budget must be balanced and adopted before May 1^st.  The Village will be holding a series of budget meetings over the next couple of weeks to discuss each department.  All meetings are public and will be held in the courtroom.  Here’s the schedule:

March 26         6:00 – 7:00 pm            Building, Planning, Engineering

March 30         5:00 – 8:00 pm            Public Works, Fire Department, Court, Revenue

April 6             5:00 –  8:00 pm           Police, Manager, Attorney, Clerk, Treasurer, IT

April 8             5:00 – 8:00 pm            Harbor Master, Parks, Recreation/Marine Ed Center

April 21            5:00 – 7:00 pm            If necessary

The Tentative Budget also included Year 2 of the Five-Year Capital Plan passed by the BOT last July.  See HERE.

If all goes according the plan, the final budget vote will most likely be held at the April 27^th meeting of the Board of Trustees.