FACEBOOKThe Stillwater Board of Trustees has unanimously approved a $1.55 million village budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year, which carries no property tax increase from the current year.
The village property tax rate will remain at $4.10 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2019-20. There is also no change in the water/sewer use rate village residents paid in 2018-19.
The budget vote March 19 followed a public hearing in which no one commented on the proposed spending plan. The new budget will go into effect on June 1.
The newly-approved budget for 2019-20 totals $1,534,150 and breaks down as follows:
- General Fund: $842,300 – up $26,682 from 2018-19
- Water Fund: $331,150 – up $18,650 from 2018-19
- Sewer Fund: $360,700 – up $27,300 from 2018-19
- Total Budget: $1,534,150 – up $72,632 from 2018-19
No fiscal stress for village
Mayor Judith Wood-Shaw also announced that for the third straight year the Village of Stillwater earned a negative declaration for fiscal and environmental stress by New York State Office of the Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
DiNapoli’s annual monitoring system, which was implemented in 2013, evaluates local governments on nine financial indicators and creates a fiscal stress score. Indicators assess fund balance, cash-on-hand, short -term borrowing, fixed costs and patterns of operating deficits.The system also evaluates information such as population trends, poverty and unemployment in order to establish a separate “environmental” score for each municipality which can be used to help describe the environment in which these local governments operate.