ALBANY COUNTY — Albany County’s proposed shared services plan, which had been reviewed and voted on by town leaders last year, has been updated and will be put to another vote Friday.

With more municipalities participating, the final plan has projected savings of another $1.75 million in the first three years over original calculations.

Counties across New York were instructed by the governor’s office last year to form a plan to lower property taxes by cutting costs through sharing services among municipalities. Small towns were wary of losing autonomy, but admittedly in need of sharing expenses; municipal leaders voted overwhelmingly in favor of the plan last year.

James Malatras, the president of the Rockefeller Institute, which formulated the shared-services plan, told The Enterprise Wednesday that the original plan had been approved and submitted, but it was eventually withdrawn after other municipalities wanted to share in the savings. Malatras said that the plans are allowed to be resubmitted if more savings can found.

The savings in the first year — originally projected at $1.5 million — will be $2.3 million in the proposed plan, said Malatras. In the second year, the projection jumps from $6.75 million to $7.2 million, he said; and in the third year, after which the savings will repeat each year, projected savings went from $9.7 million to $10.2 million.

In the new shared-services plan, two proposals were updated, said Malatras. The shared equipment program increased from around $500,000 in projected savings to over $1 million, due to more municipalities participating in the program. However, the projected savings for a proposed shared facility dropped by a little under $1 million after the Voorheesville School District pulled out of the plan when it determined the county highway garage wouldn’t fit its needs for school buses, he said.

Three new proposals were added to the shared-services plan, said Malatras. One is to have a county-wide requests for proposals for solar-energy equipment to improve municipalities’ buying power — a projected savings of $225,00, he said.

A second proposal draws on the anaerobic digester shared between Albany and Saratoga counties, which will create energy from waste. Municipalities have since asked to dispose food scraps in the digester and to use energy from it, he said, causing a new savings in the shared-services plan of $250,000.

A third addition to the plan is a county-wide process to digitize municipal records, which Malatras said would save $500,000 within the plan.

Public absent from hearings

The county had scheduled three public hearings on the updated plan, but the public did not attend the meetings.

Mary Rozak, a spokeswoman for Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy’s office, said the hearings were attended only by public officials — like Guilderland Supervisor Peter Barber and Albany County Legislator Mark Grimm in Guilderland and Watervliet City Manager Jeremy Smith in Watervliet.

The meetings — which were held in Albany, Guilderland, and Watervliet over the last two weeks — were to present a final shared-services plan before it is discussed and voted on Friday by representatives of the towns and school districts within Albany County.