The Village of Flower Hill’s Board of Trustees has adopted a proposed budget for the 2020-21 year, and has taken a 6 percent spending cut due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Deputy Mayor Brian Herrington, a member of the Finance Committee along with Mayor Robert McNamara and Trustee Randall Rosenbaum, said in a statement released April 14 that the plan was “the most difficult budget we have had to put together in [his] time on the board.” The budget had been approved shortly before McNamara’s death on April 15.
“There is no manual they give you that says here is the budget you implement during a pandemic,” Herrington said. “I want to thank Mayor McNamara, the staff and Trustee Rosenbaum for all their hard work in getting us to a balanced budget.”
The committee created a balanced budget by tapping into the village’s reserve funds, a legal mechanism that municipalities can use to fund capital projects or provide financial stability preventing increases in taxes or cutting services.
Significant revenue decreases had been anticipated due to the coronavirus impacting construction project applications and real estate transfers, and most departments received cuts. Major projects like a new computer server and a laser fiche system for electronic record storage were put on hold and removed from the budget.
While expenses were reduced due to the pandemic, essential services like park and street maintenance, road paving and neighborhood beautification were still included.
Increases include a $70,000 mandated increase in the Roslyn and Port Washington Fire District tax collections will also be impacting village residents in those areas.
Funding was also increased in the legal budget to continue the village’s lawsuit with ExteNet Systems, which sued the village last year after the board of trustees rejected its applications to build 5G cell nodes, as well as other anticipated legal costs.
The Finance Committee has also prepared an austerity plan, and will be meeting regularly to determine if further modifications to the budget are necessary until the crisis is over.
“Thanks to smart financial planning, we are prepared to weather a downturn in revenues if they materialize,” Herrington said. “We have planned for the worst but have left ourselves flexibility to make adjustments. We structured this budget in a way that anticipates headwinds from the crisis for a period of time but ensures we can get revenue generating operations online again quickly.”
