Village of Pleasantville Looking Ahead
It is not yet 2012, yet the Pleasantville Village Board is already looking ahead to 2013 and beyond.
At a recent work session, the board discussed some of its upcoming costs in the coming years and what future budgets might look like. Like all municipalities across New York, the village has dealt with rising pension and health care costs, while also settling tax certiorari cases that decrease the tax base.
Further confounding things is the state’s two-percent property tax cap on the tax levy that was passed this year.
Mayor Peter Scherer created a program in Excel that features the village’s revenues and expenses for coming years, and allows the board to adjust based on how members would like to allocate funds.
Going into next year’s budget, when factoring all expenses, the village has only $48,000 to spend under the cap and is not sure it can live within the cap in future years as pension and health care costs continue to skyrocket.
“We need to start cutting,” Scherer said. “We should try to live within the cap but I am not confident that we can do it. The years following will be a bloodletting. We are not staying under the cap without some services being cut. ”
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.