By Tom Grace
COOPERSTOWN _ At the end of six-hour meeting Wednesday, the Otsego County Board of Representatives adopted a 2010 budget that will raise the county budget levy by 6.27 percent.
The county tax levy, which includes workers comp costs and other charges, is slated to rise by 7.2 percent.
An exact total of appropriations will be available today, but the board started the day with a tentative budget that called for appropriations of $114,755,638.
Throughout the session,
representatives added and
subtracted many items, checking periodically on how the changes would affect the tax rate.
At the rear of the room throughout the session stood Sheriff Richard Devlin Jr. and perhaps a dozen officers, watching as board members and Treasurer Myrna Thayne worked the numbers.
In the tentative budget, Devlin was slated to lose six corrections officers, three road deputies, and the county's boat patrol.
At Tuesday night's budget hearing, hundreds of the sheriff's supporters, many in uniform, had filled the county courthouse, decrying the cuts.
The positions and patrol were restored before the budget passed, although the sheriff will lose a deputy stationed in the Department of Social Services on the third floor of the county office building.
Because this post was staffed by several part-time officers,
no deputy will lose a job because of the budget, Devlin said.
The board also agreed to restore one probation officer, a position that had been cut in the tentative budget, as well as three road maintainers for the Highway Department.
Wednesday's meeting was confusing at the start as representatives proposed adding and removing positions and services.
At the suggestion of Rep. Marti Stayton, D-Oneonta,
they agreed to either cut
items or add revenue before deciding whether or how to spend it.
During the cutting phase, the board agreed:
Not to repair a section of roof on the Meadows Office Complex, saving $150,000.
Not to give $10,000 to the Foothills Center for the Performing Arts.
To reduce the allocation for heat and lights in every building by 10 percent. ``If it's cold, wear a sweater; if it's hot, strip down,'' said Rep. Richard Murphy, D-Oneonta.
To move the STOP DWI agency from an independent office in Oneonta into the county Sheriff's Office, eliminating Stop DWI Coordinator Karen Liddle's job.
To fund one, not two, new patrol cars, saving $30,000.
The board also agreed to use $500,000 in tobacco settlement money in the 2010 budget although Thayne warned the move was cutting reserve funds too much.
On the third try, the board then raised to $30 million its estimate of how much sales tax revenue it will collect next year. In the tentative budget, this had been penciled in as $29.5 million.
Armed with these new resources, the board then began adding items into the budget, starting with the Public Health Nursing Service, which had been slated to lose one-and-a-half positions, but now will remain intact.
At the request of Rep. Donald Lindberg, R-Worcester, the board voted on restoring three senior meals sites that had been cut, but this initiative fell short.
The board also rejected an effort by Murphy to give $10,000 to Opportunities For Otsego; an effort by Rep. Sam Dubben, R-Middlefield, to increase Cooperative Extension's grant from $150,000 to $170,000; an attempt by Rep.Cathy Rothenberger, D-Oneonta, to give $5,000 apiece to Foothills and the Upper Catskill Community Council of the Arts; an effort by Rep. Betty Anne Schwerd, R-Burlington, to pay $5,000 for membership in the Mohawk Valley Economic Development District; and an effort by Rep. Greg Relic to add $75,000 to pay for more 911 dispatchers.
When the budget came to a vote, five representatives voted no: Relic, Schwerd, Cathy Clark, R-Otego, Lindberg and Rep. James Johnson, R-Otsego.
Johnson, chair of the county's Administration Committee, had started the meeting by warning that the nation's and state's fiscal woes required the county to make deep cuts. Revenue that New York State has routinely sent to counties may well not come next year, he warned, opining that the county's budget is a ``travesty.'' Rep. Stephen Fournier, R-Milford, said he believes Johnson's forecast is overly bleak and board Chair James Powers, R-Butternuts, said he believed the board had done an excellent job under trying circumstances.
The spending plan then passed.
