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Lake Placid presents biggest challenge of career for treasurer

LAKE PLACID – With a Main Street rebuild on the horizon, Paul Ellis was presented with a tough situation when he moved from treasurer for the village of Saranac Lake to the same position in Lake Placid last summer.

With his first year in Lake Placid now in the rearview mirror, Ellis describes it as both the most difficult and rewarding experience of his professional life. Signing on in 2015 as the village board geared up to tackle a Main Street that Mayor Craig Randall described to be in a “fledging state,” it’s taken a combination of efficiency, creativity and communication for Ellis to position the village to save taxpayers money.

Speaking last week, Randall said the village expects a timetable of about six years to complete the Main Street reconstruction. The next two years would consist of securing and finalizing funding, then around three years of seasonal work on sewer and water lines, stormwater drainage and parking garage projects.

Randall lauded Ellis for his work the past year as the village laid the groundwork for the Main Street projects. The seasoned treasurer helped the village to secure a $288,750 grant and a $866,250 loan this summer for its much-needed sewer line project. The grant and loan equal the estimated $1,155,000 cost it will take to complete the project, Randall said.

The summer announcement was the second batch of funding the village received for those projects; last December the village won $1.85 million to put toward replacing stormwater drains downtown. Along with the board’s March approval of a round of resolutions to borrow up to $10.5 million for Main Street projects, Ellis and the board are waiting to hear back from state agencies on other grant funding related to the Main Street projects.

To set the wheels in motion Ellis said it’s taken a combination of financial fundamentals and bigger-picture creativity to achieve what he said were his biggest successes this past year.

The first was to consolidate the village’s account codes to make the budget more user-friendly for board members. Ellis said he deleted or merged 1,300 codes.

“I would say I have accomplished about 75 percent of what I want to do with chart of accounts,” he said, “I still think there is more room for improvement.

“An accounting system has to generate reports that are useful to management, and we are definitely achieving that goal,” he added.

Ellis followed Peggy Mousaw as village treasurer, who worked for the village from 2009 to 2015.

“She was a different type of treasurer, very detail oriented,” Randall said. “Paul is more macro. They both have had their place in getting the village to where it is today.”

Ellis also refinanced a pair of loans that had been on the village’s books. Entering the job looking to find the village as much savings as quickly as possible, Ellis looked into refinancing a loan with the New York Power Authority on an electrical line that was brought into the village several years ago. After a discussion with Ellis, NYPA agreed to refinance the loan at a lower rate and shorten the term. Ellis estimated the net savings to village electric customers would be $750,000 over 12 years.

Ellis also worked with the village’s financial advisor, Fiscal Advisors, analyzing and refinancing two bonds that will save the village an additional $700,000 over 12 years. One bond was for the village’s aerial fire truck, and the other was a consolidation of multiple projects prior to 2008, including the rebuilding of Mill Pond Drive and Mirror Lake Drive. As a result of the refinance, Ellis said the village’s payments will go down by about $35,000 a year.

“I always want to understand the root of why we do things, so when I came across the invoice and you look into it, you start to say, ‘Does it have to be this way?’ Ellis said. “And I know from my past experience, all it takes sometimes is simply asking a question.”

Ellis said savings like this is crucial for the village to stay below the state tax cap. After voting to override the tax cap in June, Ellis and the board proposed a 2016-17 budget right at its maximum tax levy of $3,604,902. It’s an increase of 2.45 percent compared to the village’s 2015-16 budget and equals an estimated tax rate of $5.82 per $1,000 of assessed property value – an increase of about 13 cents.

The tax cap limits each municipality, county and special district’s property tax levy from rising by more than a certain amount from one year to the next. Each board can override it, but that might come with political consequences.

The amount of the cap is commonly thought of as 2 percent, but it actually varies every year, based on inflation. The state comptroller has set the base rate at 0.68 percent for 2017.

“The government basically is indicating inflation at rates of a half a percent,” Ellis said, “which means our tax levy can’t go up more than a half a percent. So that means I have even less and less money to work with to cover our operational needs.”

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