Tyksinski pledges $1.3 million in savings

By ELIZABETH COOPER

Posted Mar 24, 2010 @ 10:15 PM

Last update Mar 24, 2010 @ 11:00 PM

NEW HARTFORD —

Supervisor Patrick Tyksinski gave his Town Board a tough ultimatum Wednesday — make cuts or face an even more dire financial situation.

The four board members were tasked with meeting with department heads to help find $1.3 million in savings for the 2011 budget within the next two months.

If those measures aren’t taken, residents could expect another 45 to 50 percent tax hike in 2011, on top of the 46 percent increase they got in 2010, Tyksinski said.

“If they don’t do it, I will,” Tyksinski said of making the necessary cuts.

Board member Christine Krupa said those goals were “absolutely” achievable.

“It’s not going to be pretty, but if we’ve got to do it, we’ve got to do it,” she said.

The administration of Tyksinksi’s predecessor Earle Reed had allowed town reserves to drop from $2.8 million to zero, because of imbalanced budgets — which Tyksinski pledged not to let happen again.

And town resident Mike Duffy told Tyksinski he should stick to his word.

“If you can project a 45 percent tax increase you are out of your mind,” Duffy said. “You’ve got to cut like you said you would.”

If the $1.3 million is cut, town residents could see a tax decrease next year, Tyksinski has said.

‘Define the problem’

Tyksinski said he is hoping to eliminate $1.3 million from next year’s budget.

Of that, about $700,000 would come from the elimination of the town 911 dispatch center. Another $500,000 would be found in the town’s “big three” departments — police, highway and parks.

Another $100,000 would come from the budgets of other departments.

During a question and answer period after Tyksinski’s remarks, Highway Superintendent Richard Sherman took the floor and said he didn’t think there was much more to cut from his department.

“I worked on it and cut it to the bare bones as it is,” he said of this year’s budget.

After the meeting, Sherman said the only places left to cut were salt, fuel and employees, but that could affect services and even public safety.

But board member Don Backman said proposed savings measures would be manageable.

“It’s nothing more than define the problem, define the goal and implement the action,” he said. “The tricky part will be to maintain good levels of service.”

Other board members were a bit more tentative.

Asked if it would be possible to take $1.3 million from the budget, board member David Reynolds said he wasn’t sure.

“We will have to look at it,” he said.

He noted that several key union contracts were coming up for renegotiation, and he hoped concessions could be made in areas such as health care coverage.

Board member Rich Woodland Jr. said he needed time to digest Tyksinski’s demands.

“We will look to do what the people want, with the services they want and see where the chips fall,” he said.

Planning ahead

After delving into the town’s loss of $2.8 million from its main rainy day fund over the past four years, Tyksinski said in an earlier interview Wednesday he had not found any evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Rather, the town spent beyond its means year after year, without focusing on how it would affect its financial future, he said.

The use of the fund balance was planned as part of the town’s annual budgets because expenditures continued to outstrip revenues by hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said.

And by the end of 2008, there was just $250,000 in the fund. Despite that, the town budget reflected plans to take almost $1.2 million from it in 2009, town statistics provided by Tyksinski showed.

“You’ve got to do some simple equations and say, ‘Where is this going to lead us in four or five years?’” Tyksinski said. “This should never have happened.”