The morning of 2024-03-16 was a Budget Workshop for the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees.
Before saying anything else, I’ll point out this meeting was about building the budget. Thus a variety of ‘what if’s were thrown around and all numbers should be taken with a healthy dose of salt. That being said…
The discussion started off with the Sewer budget, which is effectively a separate entity from the Village budget. At least from a financial perspective, even if many of the people involved are the same.
Looks like they are planning to replace a portion of the sewer along Greenlea. Which I expect to be mildly inconvenient for the people living on that section of road, but a non-issue for most practical purposes. What stood out to me was the map.
I would have expected the sewer lines to more or less follow the roads. Sure, branching here and there, but not have breaks in the middle of the road. But that is just what I saw. In just the part I could see, both East and Fairlawn had spots the sewer line stopped in the middle of the road. I could see how Fairlawn then went around the north, into the field, to connect back up to Greenlea. But however the east half of East connects back up was off the map.
I should scare up a map of the whole system, see if that sort of thing is normal or an oddity for this area.
In addition there was talk about needing to replace a portion of the ‘trickle filter’ and other repairs. I got the impression this wouldn’t have any impact on the service to the residents (which is good, I like my plumbing working). But juggling the logistics would complicate things at the treatment plant. Sounds like this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, but always better to be aware and plan ahead.
The rest of the discussion was around emergency services, mostly on the fire side. To be fair, other topics came up, but mostly in how they intersected with the fire service. Long story short, the move to (partially?) paid fire fighters has put a hole in the budget.
Looking to cut costs where possible, a number of equipment replacements are being pushed off. Those that are being done sound to be the most necessary. For example, replacing fire hoses that leak too much. While this seems prudent, and makes sense this year, long term avoiding replacements causes bigger trouble. But everyone seemed ok with this, especially the fire chief, so I think they will be fine.
On the plus side, the recent sale of the Tichenor property means the Village has recouped their costs for emergency roof repairs. Applying that here sound like it will take care of approximately half the budget ‘hole’. And while that helps alot with this year, and as was pointed out, that’s not a long term solution. This is one time income, while the expenses will be ongoing.
All that being said, they rejected the idea of raising the tax levy ~20%. Which I’m sure we are all happy about. But exploring those sort of hypotheticals is part of what budgeting is about. While numbers will need to be finalized, I head ‘less then 10%’ as a quick estimate for where they are currently expecting to end up. As this group meets on Monday, I expect it will be mentioned there. Or perhaps at next weeks next Budget Workshop.
There was also a tangent about the previously proposed idea of merging Fire Districts/Departments. It sounds like the idea isn’t going anywhere, while the underlying issues aren’t getting any better. My impression is the Village is going to try once more to get all the relevant parties together. Then either start the merging process, or throw the idea out and do what needs to be done on their own.
Considering how long the Village/Town/etc have been dancing around this issue, I’m pretty sure the answer is ‘don’t merge’. I don’t know what the reason is, but that almost doesn’t matter. I’ve seen multiple people working on this over the years, with no apparent traction. And I’ve heard the idea has been floated for longer then I’ve been observing.
Which leads me to conclude that, while going it alone may well be a ‘poor plan’, it is something the Village can do. And certainly beats the perfect plan executed never.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the March 16, 2024 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees.
As far as I could tell there was no Agenda as such. Which makes sense, as the topic was ‘Budget’.