TUPPER LAKE — The 2020 town budget passed unanimously in a board vote Thursday. It is under the state tax cap, according to town Supervisor Patti Littlefield.

The $2,646,236 budget plans to spend a little over $50,000 more than this year. The tax levy is $1,771,890, which is $48,545 (2.8%) more than the amount raised by property taxes in 2019. The budget paperwork did not include the tax cap, but Littlefield said the cap would have let the town increase its levy by $59,522, which calculates to almost 3.5%.

The town tax rate next year will be $2.75 per $1,000 of assessed value inside the village and $3.83 outside. That’s an increase from this year of 0.95% for property inside village limits and 0.97% outside the village.

This means the owner of a house appraised at $100,000 in the village will pay $12.81 more in property taxes next year, totaling $275.40, and the owner of a house appraised at $100,000 in town will pay $8.70 more in property taxes next year, totaling $381.

The town board has reduced the budget by around $140,000 since its first version to bring it below the tax cap. Since 2011 the state has insisted that local governments keep their tax levies within a cap, which begins at 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is less, and then adds formulas that take local factors into consideration. A town can exceed the cap if its board first passes a resolution saying it expects to exceed it, which the Tupper Lake town board did not do this year.

Though there were some cuts to the budget to meet this requirement, much of the reduction was made up through $210,000 appropriated from the town’s various fund balances, which collect unspent money from the town each year, as well as $75,000 from the highway department’s equipment reserve. Before these appropriations, the general fund balance was estimated at around $700,000, and Littlefield anticipates adding to the balances at the end of the current fiscal year.

Since the last reported version of the budget, Littlefield said she removed $5,000 from the general fund and highway equipment fund, and added around $10,000 in expected revenue, using money set aside to spend on the James C. Frenette Sr. Recreational Trails cross-country ski center. The money came from a donation box at the trailhead of the course and will be used to offset the cost of maintenance and improvements planned for this year.