Published: October 07, 2008 11:35 pm      

CITY OF LOCKPORT: Budget carries 2-cent rate cut

The Common Council is set to approve a 2009 city budget tonight that forecasts a 2-cent reduction in the tax rate.

Budget Director Richard Mullaney covered the basics in a sparsely attended public hearing Tuesday night.

The rate cut, estimated at a nickel a week ago, changed after Mullaney plugged updated annual debt payment figures into the budget formula, he said.

With adoption of a $22.6 million spending plan for next year, the city tax rate will fall to $15.67 from $15.69 this year.

“It’s a minor reduction,” Mullaney said, and it’s attributed to the Council’s counting of $750,000 unspent fund balance as income next year. “There is no change in services that the city provides.”

Among new spending items that went unquestioned by aldermen, and unchallenged by three residents who turned out to the hearing, are inclusion of a fourth attorney on the city staff and a line showing the city will pay $64,000 for stage rentals in next year’s Molson Canal Concert series.

The attorney, still to be hired, will either work housing court exclusively or work traffic court, dangerous dog and tax foreclosure proceedings. Current second deputy counsel Matthew Brooks has handled all of these matters and Mayor Michael Tucker pushed for an additional attorney to take on court matters alone; prosecution of building code violations has increased significantly since the city ramped up efforts to fight housing blight this year, he said.

Where Tucker said he complemented the Council for turning in a “good, responsible” budget for next year, resident Doralyn Marshall of Waterman Street suggested he and the aldermen could have cut the tax rate further by abolishing, or significantly downsizing, the youth and recreation department.

Pointing out its $200,000-plus budget lines, she said, “I still don’t know what it does.”

To Tucker’s rote answer — that it provides youth programming — Marshall responded impatiently, “We already have a youth program. It’s called schools.”

Residents Diane Phelps of Outwater Drive and Karen Carroll of Park Lane Circle asked general questions but did not overtly suggest they saw anything wrong in the budget.

To Phelps’ observation that the City of Lockport is paying into the Molson concert series where its former host, the City of North Tonawanda, never did, City Attorney John Ottaviano suggested that was one reason why the series left North Tonawanda; the organizer wanted help from a host offsetting operational costs.

Carroll asked whether the Council is seriously entertaining any ways to reduce the city employee “head count.”

Tucker seemed to say it is not. He and Mullaney recited old numbers showing city employment is reduced by about one third since 1980. Mullaney suggested further reductions would be complicated by union opposition.

“We’re always reducing. Over the years we’ve reduced a lot,” Tucker said. “We’re bare bones now.”

The 2009 utility budgets, $3.77 million for water service and $4.11 million for sewer service, are modestly lower than this year’s budgets, Mullaney said.

The Council last month lowered the residential sewer user rate by $2.50 and authorized raising the water user rate by the same amount. Coming water line repair work legally has to be paid for from the water fund, which has less cash on hand, hence the redirection in where the user fees get deposited, Alderman Patrick Schrader said.

The change should not raise or lower anyone’s quarterly water-sewer bill, Mullaney added.

Contact reporter Joyce Miles at 439-9222, ext. 6245.