Both Voorheesville and Altamont have come up with budgets for fiscal year 2015-16. Both are under the state-set levy limit. The tax rate in Voorheesville remains the same as the previous year while, in Altamont, the rate went up just a fraction of a cent.

Altamont’s $2,100,112 budget was adopted by the village board on April 7, and Voorheesville’s $2,071,910 proposal is set to be adopted on April 28.

Altamont

In Altamont, which has a population of about 1,700, the tax rate of $2.7941 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, increased about three-quarters of a penny to $2.8017. So for instance, village Treasurer Catherine Hasbrouck said, a house assessed at $200,000 that previously paid $558.82 in taxes will now pay $560.20. While it is an increase, it’s an increase in that case of $1.38, she said.

Hasbrouck noted the assessed value of the village properties went down. Ron’s Service Station came off the rolls, after it was destroyed in a fire in June 2013, bringing the assessed value down by about $159,000. The amount to be raised through taxes was unchanged at $281,856.

In Altamont, salaries for both staff and elected officials were raised by 2 percent.

Workers’ compensation expenses went down in Altamont by more than $10,000, from $23,486 in the previous year’s budget, to $12,300. At the village board meeting on April 7, Mayor James Gaughan attributed this savings to the staff’s discovery of a less expensive plan. Hasbrouck said that this savings was reflected throughout the budget.

Revenues from sales tax in 2013-14 were $552,444.03. The budget for 2014-15 had anticipated only $510,000 in sales-tax revenue. So, in the new budget, the amount of revenue expected from sales tax was raised conservatively, Hasbrouck said, to the midway point between $550,000 and $510,000; the new budget anticipates $530,000 in sales tax revenue.

Another change, Hasbrouck said, was that the village moved some salaries from the water fund to the general fund. She said that the village found that some work was being done more in the general fund area — such as streets or parks — rather than the water fund area. At the same time, revenues had not been coming into the water fund as they had in the past, Hasbrouck said, and by reducing expenses in the water fund by moving salaries over, the village was able to avoid increasing water rents.

Village expenses for senior services went up by $4,000 because Altamont is no longer receiving a grant from the Department of Aging for the senior lunch program, and the village will be taking over that expense.

Voorheesville           

In Voorheesville, which has a population of about 2,800, the tax rate for 2015-16 is unchanged from the previous year, at $1.2552 per $1,000 of assessed valuation.

Last year, Voorheesville had gone over the state-set levy limit, requiring a supermajority vote of the board; the current proposal is under the cap.

One reason that the village was able to keep the rate unchanged was that, when public works employee Michael Wiesmaier retired in June 2014, his position was not filled, Trustee Jack Stevens said.

Village salaries for elected officials and staff were raised by 1.99 percent.

Stevens said the village had originally planned to raise payments for the Length Of Service Awards Program, a pension system for volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers, which are currently set at $480 per qualifying firefighter.

LOSAP amounts paid for qualifying ambulance workers had been raised several years ago, from $480 to the state cap of $700, but, at the time, firefighters offered to postpone their own increases in order to help fund renovations to the firehouse that were done in 2007. The village had intended, Stevens said, to begin raising the firefighters’ LOSAP payments by $110 each year until reaching the $700 cap and had included this in a preliminary draft of the budget, but had not realized that this item needed to be put to a vote.

“We will be doing that in the future,” he said.

Stevens said that it was a tribute to the public works department, and to Superintendent Will Smith, that they were “able to hold the line” this year.