The “Double Deuce Doosie”

If you’re reading this, then it’s likely you’re sitting down already. If not, then I encourage you to take a seat or at least find something to hold on to.

Okay? Ready for this? Probably not, but here it goes, anyway…

As presented last month to the board of trustees, Brockport’s tentative budget for the coming fiscal year calls for a 22% tax increase.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “Whoa! That’s a big increase!” then you know exactly how I felt when the proposal was revealed. Thank goodness the board will have an opportunity to revise it, because it would take an extraordinary set of circumstances before I would support a hike like that in the midst of a recession—or at any other time, for that matter.

So how did it come to this, a “double deuce doosie,” you might ask. Well, if there’s one thing I’ve observed since taking office last summer, it’s that answers in village government are usually harder to come by than questions. I can state for sure, though, that not every department came through on the request that some board members made to trim expenses by 2%. Also, it seems prudent to plan for less revenue to be generated through sales tax during the coming fiscal year, simply because people tend to diminish their spending during economic downturns like the whopper the state and country are in right now.

I know it’s a tangent, but the next government official who begins his remarks about how bad things are fiscally at the moment by saying, “Not since the Great Depression…” ought to be smacked right in his WPA. As I mentioned when talking about the budget at the village board’s last meeting this past Monday, some of us actually know others who have been laid off during the past few months. My own list keeps growing. It includes people with more than a decade with their now former employers. It includes some who held white-collar jobs. It includes folks in the trades, others in professions, and some in education, an industry that tends to do well when the economy doesn’t. So I get it: these are tough times, the kind that come along only about once every other generation.

The difference between most people and me is that I have at least an opportunity and perhaps an obligation to do something about taxes. And while 22% is a big—even an alarming—figure, it’s what’s behind that number that really matters.

As I suggested during my April 3 board report, I feel strongly that Brockport’s leadership must at this time begin to evaluate what programs and services we are asking taxpayers to buy. As an example, I alluded in my remarks that evening to the village’s water fund.

Back in the good old days, many municipalities operated their own water departments for one simple reason: it was profitable. However, as villages’ infrastructure aged and water distribution became more consolidated (locally under the Monroe County Water Authority), the number of municipalities going it alone began to diminish.

Today Brockport is one of the few villages in western New York still selling water to its residents. Problem is, to turn a buck doing it, the village needs to buy the water wholesale, which it does from the MCWA, and then mark it up. The result is that we pay more in Brockport for water than do our neighbors in Sweden, or anywhere else around here. The kicker is that the village lost money on water sales last year, in part because consumption appears to have been down.

Although water isn’t necessarily central to the discussion about the future of the village’s finances, it does illustrate how out of whack things have gotten. While the tentative budget asks you to reach into your pocket and pull out about $200 more per household for the village, if I have anything to say about it, Brockport’s taxpayers are not going to be soaked during the coming fiscal year.