State-imposed budget deadlines loom as Riverhead Town Board is set to hold its first budget discussion Thursday

The time for making tough decisions about the 2016 town budget is passing quickly and, once again, Riverhead Town Board members have shown no appetite for partaking in the budget process in any serious way.

With less than a month left to meet a statutory deadline for adopting next year’s operating budget and less than a week before a mandated public hearing on the town board’s preliminary budget, the Riverhead Town Board has not had a single public discussion of the budget delivered to them by the supervisor on Sept. 30.

That will change come Thursday morning, when council members as a group will discuss Supervisor Sean Walter’s tentative budget: a $92.7 million spending plan that calls for a 1.4 percent overall spending increase, a 4.1 percent tax rate hike and a 5.06 percent tax levy increase, requiring the town board to pierce the state-mandated cap on the town property tax levy.

The odds are slim that the Riverhead Town Board will comply with the requirements of Article 8 of the N.Y. State Town Law, which require it to review the tentative budget, make any changes it desires and adopt a preliminary budget prior to the mandated public hearing. (See: “Town Budget 101,” Sept. 30) With a public hearing set for Wednesday afternoon and the very first budget discussion set for Thursday morning, the board has two business days — Friday and Monday — to agree on a preliminary budget, call a special board meeting and vote to adopt.

More likely, this board, as it has in the past five years, simply allow the supervisor’s tentative budget to become the preliminary budget by default, hold a public hearing on that budget and then discuss it more afterward — foreclosing the possibility of public comment on the budget they actually plan to adopt.

If they actually adopt a budget, that is. This board has adopted a final budget only once in the past five years — despite a statutory mandate requiring it to adopt a final budget on or before Nov. 20.

This year, though, there’s an added wrinkle. Remember, the supervisor’s budget requires the board to pierce the property tax levy limitation, so the board will have to adopt a local law authorizing a tax levy in excess of the statutory limit. The vote on the tax cap must come before the vote on the budget itself.

If a majority of the board balks at voting to “pierce the cap” but at the same time fails to adopt a budget within the statutory levy limitation, Riverhead’s property tax levy limitation next year (for 2017) will be reduced by the amount of the unauthorized excess in 2016. That would create an extremely difficult situation for whoever is sitting on the board in 2016. It would mean the allowed levy for 2017 would be automatically reduced by $1.23 million — because the tentative budget delivered by Supervisor Sean Walter on Sept. 30 calls for a property tax levy that’s $1.23 million more than this year’s statutory limit.

So a vote to pierce the tax cap, however politically unpalatable it may be, is pretty much unavoidable — unless the budget can be brought in line with the tax levy limit. The supervisor says it can’t be done; that’s likely a good bet, since no politician running for re-election would propose a budget that requires the town to pierce the tax cap if it there were any way around it.

Three of the four council members say they believe it’s unavoidable and say they are willing to vote to pierce the cap.

“It looks like there are no alternatives,” Councilman George Gabrielsen said in an interview.

Councilman James Wooten agreed. “I’ve been over and over the budget and I don’t see any way around it,” he said in an interview.

Councilman John Dunleavy said he thought the town should have pierced the cap before this year, raising taxes incrementally rather than drawing down its general fund balance.

But Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, who is running for supervisor this year, doesn’t agree.

“I can’t see supporting that right now,” Giglio said of piercing the cap in a phone interview Friday. “I think there’s a lot that can be done with the budget. I know we can do it as a board.”

Giglio said she has a plan but was not forthcoming with details.

“Until I garner support from my board members, there’s no sense in airing it and alienating town employees that may not be budgeted for next year,” she said. However, she added, she would not cut “the union” because “they’ve given enough.”

The councilwoman said she would eliminate the deputy supervisor’s position, but also said she would use some of the savings to hire part-time code enforcement officers. She would also increase rental permit fees, she said. Additional saving would come from reducing police overtime “by better management.” Stepped up code enforcement, combined with a more efficient justice court that will add night court sessions, will generate more revenue, she said.

Will these measures add up to the $1.23 million needed to come in under the tax levy cap? Giglio says she wants to see proof that the excess amount quoted by the supervisor is “real.”

Giglio says she’s got more ideas, but would need three board votes to implement them. She points out that the board still has more than three weeks to develop and adopt an alternative budget and is not concerned about having a preliminary budget before next Wednesday’s public hearing.

“I don’t know that’s what the public hearing is about. It’s to hear from the residents what they want,” she said.

“I think that after the election, my board members will help me put my budget in the direction I want to see the town go in next year,” Giglio said.

“Right now, the board members are saying that it’s Sean’s budget” and they won’t to agree to change it, she said.

But Dunleavy, Wooten and Gabrielsen all denied having such a conversation with Giglio or telling her they’d be willing to change the budget after the election, should she emerge victorious.

“Certainly nobody wants to vote to pierce the cap,” Wooten said. “But I’ve been through the budget over and over and over, and I just can’t see where we could cut that kind of money,” he said.

“I can only see some little cuts here and there,” Gabrielsen said. “Nothing that adds up to the amount we’d need to avoid piercing the cap. I have no idea what other ideas she may have. She’s said she has ideas, but I’ve never heard specifics. If she’s got something, she should share it,” he said.

“Just to vote no and have no options, that’s just dumb, dumb and dumber,” Gabrielsen said.