This morning (2021-03-06) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees for a workshop on next years budget.
While this was a budget meeting, the interesting parts aren’t the numbers. Perhaps because I didn’t have the numbers in front of me. Or perhaps because the numbers reflect what is going on. And that brings up discussions, stories, and plans. Which is the interesting part.
Worth mentioning, in case it isn’t clear, this is a workshop to put together a budget. Ideas are tossed around that may not happen. You can’t find solutions if you don’t explore options.
The sewer was discussed first. From a budgetary standpoint, it is a separate entity from the Village proper. Even if organizationally there is a fair sized amount of overlap (same elected officials overseeing it, much of the staff works on both, etc).
The schools bill for the sewer is based on the number of people on campus (or at least staff, wasn’t clear if students also counted). This makes sense, but I hadn’t heard this before. It does have the indirect side effect of providing the Village with an incentive to get all the students and staff back in school. As if we needed more of those.
Replacements of various equipment is being planned, some of it from the 1960’s. Currently budgeting for the engineering phase, not actual construction. No imminent failures are expected, but nothing lasts forever. Better to plan for replacements then have a crisis. Which would of course happen at the worst possible time, thus increasing expenses.
Flushable wipes are bad for the sewer system. Which comes as no surprise to me. They are essentially paper, which I’ve been told previous not to flush down the drain. More negative side effects of the growing number of hypochondriacs.
Parts of the sewer system includes clay tiles from the 1930’s. I’m sure we don’t have the oldest sewer in the world, but it does go to show that good infrastructure quietly does it’s job long after those that built it are gone.
With the sewer discussion done, it was on to the general budget. Which started this meeting short by ~$150k. By the end of the meeting that was down to ~$15k. So not quiet where it needs to be, but pretty close. And still time to figure out how to close that gap, even as potential ideas were being tossed around.
The revenue lines, to an even larger extent then the expenses, are somewhat guess work. How do you predict sales tax? Ideally you look at the past and see trends. Which works when there are no surprises. Hence guess work, as surprises are somewhat inevitable. You want to be hopeful, and increase the lines. But if you’re wrong you run out of money down the road. So you should be pessimistic, which makes the budgeting harder. Increasing the odds you have a surplus as the year goes on. Yet another situation where balance is important, but where you want to fail on the conservative side.
Hyde Park costs are currently an unknown, but will have to be paid. Another case of making a best guess. Interesting enough, it sounds like local residents don’t want the road returned to full use. Do some patchwork and make it into a dead end instead. Interesting idea, but I think the road has value as a bypass should a bridge fail. Which as I recall, happened suddenly one day.
There was discussion about increasing the amount of the healthcare cost footed by the staff, instead of the Village. In general, I think this is a good idea. Make the compensation as clear as possible and let people figure out their own healthcare (retirement, clothing, etc).
One of the staff brought up the idea of cutting staff hours. They were clearly not thrilled with the possibility, but I applaud them for bringing it up. The alternative of holding salaries flat (ie no raises) was also mentioned. Looking at these things is what budgeting is about. You do what you have to in order to balance the sides, and explore the possibilities until you get there.
The benefits of having a fund balance were mentioned. In particular how it allows paying certain expenses early, which leads to discounts and thus savings. Which is the trade off of too aggressively trimming the budget, at some point your costs may end up higher.
Talk about how to fund work on the website came up. I’ll freely admit I’m biased here, both because I do website work, but also because I want the Village to take better advantage of theirs. In the end, I could care less who does what. I just want the website to be useful for the public and the staff to not have headaches updating it. While there are details to work out, it sounds like they are getting close to a plan here.
A desire to repair sidewalks around the Village was expressed, primarily in the downtown area. Some of which is already in this years budget, but not enough for all the issues. Which brought on a talk about where alternate funds could be found (grants and such).
It was explicitly stated that they do NOT want to increase the tax rate. Thus the focus on finding ways to make it work at the current level. Which is really what budgeting is all about: Managing competing wants, needs, and resources.
Again, as this isn’t a final budget, but merely a step towards that, any or all of the above ideas may well be changed before the budget is approved.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the March 6, 2021 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees. Next meeting of this group should be on March 13 at 8AM.