Sullivan 2009 budget and solid waste tour

County officials explain the pain

By FRITZ MAYER

SULLIVAN COUNTY, NY — The outlook for the county budget for 2010 is gloomier than at any point in the past decade, and perhaps quite a bit longer. Sales taxes for 2009 will come in at about $2.64 million less than in 2008. Mortgage and property taxes will be about $1.75 million less than the previous year, and state aid dropped about $600,000. Overall, 2009 revenue for Sullivan County will have decreased by $6.07 million from 2008.

Expenses, meanwhile, continue to rise. Payments to the state pension system, for instance, will cost $2.1 million more in 2010 than in 2009. Union salary increases must also be met at a cost of $1.8 million, and an increase in state-mandated early intervention services will cost $760,000. All told, expenses for the county for the new year will increase by some $4.6 million in 2010, on a budget of about $191 million.

To balance the budget for next year, lawmakers are looking at a tax increase in the neighborhood of five percent as well as the elimination of 46 full-time jobs, three part-time jobs and 54 vacant jobs.

With that negative scenario as a backdrop, county manager David Fanslau and chairman Jonathan Rouis are taking the unusual step of traveling away from the county seat to some of the towns to explain the need for the serious budget actions, and the need for revamping the county’s solid-waste system.

After Fanslau laid out the basic facts, residents wanted to know if the county would be spending money on some projects that some thought were unnecessary, such as the proposed Scenic Byway Visitors Center in Cochecton and the proposed county jail.

Fanslau said while the visitors center is listed in the county’s capital plan, no money has been set aside for it. That’s because the county is not sure that the promised state and federal grants to fund 90 percent of the project will be forthcoming. On the matter of the jail, Fanslau said that no money is included in the 2010 budget, and it would likely not be bonded until 2011.

When the discussion turned to solid waste, Rouis indicated that the county is now considering a hybrid system of funding that would be partially paid by a user fee of perhaps $80 per household, along with a tipping fee of perhaps $85 per ton. The other option was a user fee only of about $180 with no tipping fee.

Narrowsburg businessman Rick Lander, who had been vocally opposed to the no tipping fee plan, said that he might support the hybrid model because the tipping fee would encourage residents to recycle, while the user fee part of the plan, though smaller than initially envisioned, would spread the cost of the system to county tax-exempt organizations, which are not currently paying as much as typical taxpayers to support the solid-waste operation.

The questions about the solid-waste user fee continued at a meeting at the Liberty Senior Center in Liberty on December 1. As officials explained that the county must come up with a way to pay off the $41 million debt that has accrued because of past landfill operations, residents complained that the county was balancing the budget on the backs of current property owners.

Another meeting will be held on December 9 at the Mamakating Town Hall in Wurtsboro at 7:00 p.m. Additionally, the legislature will also conduct two informational meetings and public hearings at the government center in Monticello: one on December 10 at 12:00 noon, and the other on December 14 at 7:00 p.m.