Dear Neighbor,
Since early February, the Alfred Village Board has been working through the budget process as is mandated by the State of New York. Before that budget goes into effect, we want to make the public aware of some necessary increases; both in tax rate and to our water/utility bills.
For fiscal year 20-21, our tax rate will increase 26 cents per thousand of assessed property value or 1.73% (staying within the 1.78% tax cap for 2020). This produces only an additional $6,528 in revenue against a $1.3M budget which means that if inflation is 2% against all our expenses the Village will be $20k further behind in the General Fund. Some of this shortfall is also the result of flat and, over a longer timeframe, decreased state aid. The Village Board will continue to look for ways to minimize expenses and explore ways in which our other revenue sources could also grow at the rate of inflation.
Additionally, we will need to increase utility rates. Our community has historically had the ability to keep our utilities artificially low relative to other municipalities in the state. Our Village staff and trustees have spent the past several months researching water and sewer rates both in our region, and in towns and villages with colleges and SUNY schools. On the whole, our water and sewer rates have been historically low. Even with these adjustments, our rates remain competitive.
We acknowledge that this does not make an increase like this any easier to bear, particularly in present circumstances. Unfortunately, it is just these circumstances which compound our need to increase the rate. Not unlike our local businesses and landlords, the abrupt and early departure of the students has moved us into summer revenue rates, exacerbating the need. We intend to utilize the water and sewer fund balances to compensate for any revenue shortfall during fiscal year 2019, however our structural deficiency is due to lower consumption than we have calculated when setting utility rates.
We applaud both Alfred State College and Alfred University for their continued environmental conservation, however the cumulative effect of those savings in usage has produced a calculated shortage in our utility rates to generate the appropriate revenues to cover operation. The Village has been shifting money from the Water Fund into the Sewer Fund to close the annual gap between income and expenses, so while we are correcting for the consumption decline we are also attempting to rectify this historical deficiency.
Our expenses have also not gone down. The cost to operate the wastewater treatment plant increases year over year for a variety of reasons; from basic inflation to aging infrastructure, staffing, and shifting health and safety regulations. Furthermore, the watershed in which we return our treated wastewater is required by the New York State Department of Economic Conservation to be at a higher quality than our neighboring communities. As such, our treatment costs are higher on a relative basis. The proposed rate increases will impact constituents across the board.
Water rate increase 12.67% (for all account types)
Sewer rate increase 37.17%
Sewer Bond rate increase 13.11%
Fire Protection rate increase 15.38% (this bring revenues up to 19-20 expenditure rate, rectifying an annual shortage due to decreased consumption)
The same challenges that have faced the Village for Water and Sewer revenues are present in collection of fire protection revenue.
Even with these adjustments, the Village will be budgeting the use of $56,297.92 from the General Fund reserve account, $15,000 from the Sewer Fund reserve account, and a transfer of $91,610 from the Water Fund to the General Fund.
The budget can be found on our website for those constituent who would like to see: https://alfredny.org/
