The Town of Webb Board adopted a Final Budget for 2014 immediately following a public hearing of its Preliminary Budget on Monday, November 4th.
Total Appropriations are $7,430,102, which includes General Fund Appropriations of $6,258,036 and Highway Fund Appropriations of $1,172,066.
The total is $1,413,972 lower than the amount in the town’s 2013 budget.
Total Estimated Revenues for 2014 are $2,752,625, which includes estimated General Fund Revenues of $2,297,925 and estimated Highway Fund Revenues of $454,700.
This revenue amount is $1,377,080 less than in 2013.
Supervisor Ted Riehle said 2013 had a bump in revenue from TOBIE grant funds; but with the project having been completed, funds will no longer be received in 2014.
Total Unexpended Balance that will be applied to reduce taxes in 2014 is $1,230,000.
This includes $1,150,000 applied to the the town’s General Fund, and $80,000 applied to the town’s Highway Fund.
This amount is $160,500 less than that applied in the 2013 budget.
After offsetting budget spending with revenues and fund balance, the total amount to be raised by taxes in 2014 is $3,447,477.
This amount breaks down to $2,810, 111 for the General Fund, and $637,366 for the Highway Fund.
That is $123,608 less than was raised by taxes in 2013.
The Town of Webb Board had some particular objectives in mind in crafting the 2014 budget, according to Super-visor Ted Riehle.
Following is Riehle’s description of this year’s budget process…
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We had some bigger capital items that we wanted to address this year. We wanted to stay on track with our lake front projects, which meant tackling the second navigation dock.
We also have a big roof project at the Park Avenue Building that we need to address. And we decided to pay off the [snowmobile] groomer lease that we entered into last year. We were able to do that with this year’s budget.
We also had some capital projects we thought were important to get done this year.
Obviously you wanted to stay within the tax cap, which we were able to do.
It was good to accomplish some of these important capital projects this year. They need to be done, and you don’t want to let them go too long to where there’s potential for more catastrophic problems.
The roof at Park Ave. is a big unknown at this point. We’re going to have some engineering done. Hopefully we set aside enough money for that project, but with the [groomer] lease going on, we thought that was a bigger priority.
With the double-digit increases in workers comp, health benefits and retirement—some of those non-discretionary items that you have to wrestle with… They’re always a challenge. And they were a challenge this year also.