SARANAC LAKE — The proposed $6.7 million Harrietstown budget for the 2024 fiscal year is below the tax cap and includes a $20,000 pay raise for town Supervisor Jordanna Mallach as she takes on extra duties to assist airport management at the town-owned Adirondack Regional Airport two days a week.

The town will hold a public hearing on the proposed budget on Thursday at 5:15 p.m. This meeting will be held in person at the town board room in the basement of the town hall. It will also be streamed on Zoom at tinyurl.com/5bpntm8c or by using the meeting ID 849 5204 3140 and passcode 313222.

Mallach said the town board could vote on adopting the budget after this hearing, if they feel comfortable with it. Or, if they want more discussion, they could postpone the vote until the next week.

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What will it cost?

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The $6,741,114 budget increases spending by $76,365, a 1.15% increase in spending over the $6,664,749 budget passed for the 2023 fiscal year.

The budget calls for the town to levy $2,761,539 in taxes, a 1.8% increase from the current year and well below the state-imposed cap, which limits how much the town can increase its draw from taxpayers from year to year. The state set the tax cap for this budget at $2,803,236, or 3.29%. This budget’s tax levy is $41,697 under the tax cap.

The tax rate for someone living in the town — as well as the village of Saranac Lake — would be $2 per $1,000 of assessed value, not including taxes for any additional water or sewer districts. This is a $0.09 increase, or a 9.71%, increase.

The tax rate for someone living in the town, outside the village, would be $3.54 per $1,000 of assessed value on a home, not including taxes for any additional water or sewer districts. This is a $0, or 0%, change.

For a person with a home assessed at $300,000, that would be a base tax rate of $602 for town-village property owners — an increase of $32 from the current year — and $1,062 for town-only property owners — a change of $0 from the current year.

The budget calls for the town to pull $528,600 from its reserves to bolster the budget. The town reserves currently hold $963,871 in general funds and $899,458 in special accounts, according to town Accountant Beth Bevilacqua.

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What’s in the budget?

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Mallach said she feels “confident” in the budget this year. She said a “huge” amount of time and energy went into it.

“We spent a lot of time digging down into the numbers in terms of what, exactly, each dollar means and what it accounts for on the revenue side,” Mallach said.

The initial budget the town had was $1 million over the tax cap. Mallach said they combed through line-by-line to bring it under.

She said instead of just plugging the numbers in from last year, she wanted to make sure they were an accurate reflection of the town’s current financial situation.

The town anticipates a high increase in revenue from fuel sales at the airport.

The town’s initial budget had funding for an assistant airport manager. Airport Manager Corey Hurwitch has been wanting some extra help with the airport undertaking several large projects currently — a major redesign of the terminal building with an $8.5 million grant from the state and ongoing remediation of potentially cancer-causing chemicals called PFAS in the airport’s groundwater. This is a position that the town has had in the past.

But the position got cut from the most recent version of the budget to save costs. Instead, Mallach has offered to take on the role for additional compensation.

The stand-alone position was estimated as costing $89,000 total, including benefits. The cutting of this position was one of the things that allowed the town budget to drop below the tax cap, Mallach said.

For her taking on the role, the budget would give her a $20,000, 99%, raise.

“Giving me more money to go do additional responsibilities at the airport, overall, is less money out of the entire budget,” Mallach said in a budget meeting on Sept. 28.

She plans to work two days a week at the airport starting in January with a focus on assisting with PFAS compliance and airport terminal renovations.

Harrietstown council members have clarified that this raise is only for the 2024 budget year. It would not automatically roll over into the 2025 budget unless approved by a future vote.

This raise could be reconsidered in the future, she said. After the airport renovations are complete, there might not be as much of a need for an assistant manager as the workload would be lessened, she said.

The budget includes $27,000 to hire a part-time data collector to support town Assessor Marten Tichenor in doing a 100% reassessment of town property.

The costs of supporting employees goes up every year, and this year was no different. Mallach said retirement increased from 13.1% to 15.2%, health insurance for non-union insurance went up 9.3% and retiree health insurance went up 7.5%.

These increases are out of town officials’ hands she said. These cost increases all come from the state.

Mallach said the town gets requests for funding from outside organizations. While the town is maintaining most of these, she said some are also reduced in this proposed budget.

She said she made sure the town was in touch with the organizations and that they knew the process and what was going on, and added that the organizations appreciated the communication.

“I think they recognized that it wasn’t an arbitrary decision, that there was a lot of time and effort that went into the decision,” Mallach said.

Mallach said she cut the funding for the village’s Music on the Green music series because she the event’s budget makes it appear the village could absorb the costs better than other organizations. The town previously paid $2,500 toward this concert series.

The Saranac Lake Adult Center gets the town’s largest contribution with $27,000.

The Village Improvement Society requested less money this year — $250 instead of $500.

Mallach said Saranac Lake Civic Center officials told the town their costs have doubled since the building’s renovation last year. It had requested significantly more funding than last year, but the town kept its contribution to $11,000, the same as last year.

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article listed incorrect figures for the proposed supervisor raise. The Enterprise regrets the error.