The tentative 2012 Herkimer County budget of $95.2 million was passed by the county legislature on Wed-nes–day, December 14 after a fifteen-to-one vote, with only Legislator Helen Rose in District 2 of the Village of Herkimer in opposition.
The 2012 budget represents an .8 percent increase from the 2011 budget and includes an average tax rate increase of 3.1 percent.
The budget increase, according to Herkimer County Administrator James W. Wallace, Jr., is largely due to the rise in assessed property values throughout the county, a decrease in revenue received through PILOT programs, an increase in the cost of Medicaid, recent changes to the Welfare system, the rising numbers of Baby Boomers who are now reaching retirement age, and loss of government stimulus.
“Our problem is that we never know what the state is going to do. Often they will take away funding in midstream, and that affects our budget. So we have to take that into consideration,” said Legislator Patrick E. Russell, District 15 representative for the Town of Webb.
Herkimer County was allowed to increase taxes more than the state imposed property tax cap because of a loss in revenue from a payment-in-lieu-of taxes agreement with the Hardscrabble Wind Farm in Fairfield and Norway.
The loss in revenue for 2012 from this PILOT program is $855,000.
When creating the budget for 2012, Wallace said that the county ran into numerous difficulties due to the two percent property tax cap imposed by the state.
However, their largest issues stemmed from state-sanctioned social services programs.
“Medicaid went up about a million dollars,” Wallace said.
A bigger issue for the county stems from changes to the state’s Welfare programs, Wallace said.
The state has changed its Safety Net Program, a program which used to be funded 50/50 between the state and the county. Now the state only contributes 29 percent.
“So that’s costing us,” he said.
Despite the increases in social service costs, Herkimer County has been able to lower the overall county salary fund from $18 million to $17 million by cutting County positions down to about 995,000 jobs, according to Wallace.
When asked about the property tax rate increase for Herkimer County, Wallace said that the numbers were all over the board. While they are expecting an increase of 3.1 percent in Herkimer County, the numbers differ by town.
“Some towns go up, some go down, but it all really depends on the equalization rate,” he said.
Within Herkimer County, the Town of Webb will see the property tax rate increase to $6.49 per thousand dollars of assessed property value, which is a property tax rate increase of 28 cents per thousand dollars over the 2011 tax rate.
Out of the $95.2 million budget, approximately $25.85 million will come from revenue gained through property taxes.
Of that, $9, 546,490.76 will be coming from Town of Webb property taxes, thereby making Webb responsible for paying 38.427 percent of the total amount gained by the county in property taxes.
All in all, Russell believes the 2012 budget will set Herkimer County up for 2012 and beyond.
“The biggest thing that the committees looked at when it came to this budget was fairness. We had to look further into the future, and that’s what we’ve done,” added Russell.
