Holley's preliminary budget shows stable tax rate

Under the proposed budget for the Village of Holley, taxpayers will not see an increase in their tax rate. Mayor Stanley "Skip" Carpenter said the rate will remain steady at $14.08 per $1,000 of assessed value. Electric rates will not change.

"Some people will probably see increases in their tax bills because of the new assessments but hopefully they will be small," he said.

The budget was presented as part of the regular meeting on Tuesday, April 12. Included in the proposed spending plan are employee pay increases that range from 3.4 to 4.5 percent.

Total budget figures for 2005-2006 for water/sewer/general fund are $1,676,443. The budget for electric is $1,251,576. The total to be raised by taxes is $700,113 compared to $637,542 for last year. The totals for 2004-2005 for water/sewer/general funds were $1,542,911 and $1,182,311 for electric.

The largest expense facing the village is addressing an overflow problem at the treatment plant. "Every time it rains or when we have the run off from melting snow we get a huge influx of water from the treatment plant," Carpenter said. "The EPA and the DEC have told us we have to correct the problem."

Corrective measures include "smoke testing" houses throughout the village. The testing will check for open drains in a house from which water might be flowing into the system. Village officials will also be checking that gutters aren't flowing into the village's sanitary sewers.

"We're also going to be running cameras into the sewer lines to look for infiltration of water into the sanitary sewer," Carpenter said. "If we find holes we will have to dig them up and make repairs. It's a huge project."

Carpenter said a village officials had to move some money around from various departments in order to make the corrective actions.

"We'll fix what we can ourselves but if we run into problems beyond the scope of our manpower or equipment, we will have to contract out for it," he said. "It could be quite costly before we are done, but we have to address this issue."

Also, as part of this year's plans, Carpenter said the village will be recurbing and repaving Batavia Street. There is also a $25,000 grant the village received which will be used for sidewalk replacement. Repairs will also be made to the fire hall.

The village will also be looking at other buildings within the downtown area in which to relocate the village offices in order to make them handicapped accessible. One of the buildings the village is considering is the Historical Society's depot building, next to Jubilee Foods. The village owns the building and leases it to the society, Carpenter said. Feasibility studies will be undertaken to build an addition to the depot and relocate village offices to that location.

"I think it's a good budget," Carpenter said. "A great budget would have been able to knock the equalization (rate) back, but this is the next best thing."

There will be a special meeting before May 1, Carpenter said, to adopt the 2005-2006 spending plan.