Ardsley Board of Trustees Keeps the Lid on Taxes

By Jay Leon

Reviewing the budget by line item is not enough. Ardsley's Board of Trustees takes proactive steps to keep village property taxes as low as possible.

Ardsley Village taxes only make up about 28% of the total property taxes of a typical resident (with school taxes comprising about 60% and county and town taxes making up the rest). Ardsley village taxes only increased by about 1% last year, but we are always trying to find ways to keep our residents' overall liability as low as possible:

• Each year, the Board of Trustees, along with our Village Manager and Treasurer, review every line item in the budget, looking for potential savings and areas to cut.

• This year, grants will contribute to the improvement of Ashford and Bicentennial Parks, and we have received grants for various police, fire and library items, as well as for records management and our Justice Court.

• We increased our fund balance substantially in only a few years. This enabled us to receive a lower long term interest rate on our bond for the construction of the firehouse, saving us interest payments for years. It also earns additional interest, which we can use to off-set expenses.

• We look to find economies of scale with our neighbors by sharing services. Each month, Mayor Leon meets with the other five mayors of Greenburgh to find ways to share services and cut expenses. For example, we now share gasoline pumps with Dobbs Ferry at their new highway garage. We have saved money on a paving contract by combining bids with all six villages (an effort Ardsley spearheaded). Our library's agreement with Elmsford serves both communities well, and we have lobbied successfully for Dobbs Ferry to issue additional parking passes at their train station for Ardsley residents, and for Dobbs and Hastings to issue non-resident pool passes for interested Ardsleyites. These agreements raise revenue for the other villages and offer additional services to our residents.

• We negotiated changes in our labor contract with one union that altered work rules that were costing the village money. For instance, the rules formerly awarded overtime to senior, higher paid employees at the expense of less senior, lower paid workers. Now all employees have an equal shot at overtime. We also eliminated by way of negotiations one of two compensation banks the police were receiving.

• We try to retire debt early whenever feasible. Retiring a bond drops its interest and principal payments off the budget and saves us interest in the long run. We did that this year with a sanitation truck, paying $83,000 early in order to save interest payments.

• Where appropriate we consolidated short term debt into our long term serial bond for the firehouse construction. By depreciating assets over more years, it brings down the annual payments. For instance, we did this with a garbage truck.

• Our negotiations with Verizon and Cablevision resulted in one hundred thousand dollars in communication grants and included valuable connections at the library, community center and McDowell Park that will enable us to broadcast live from those locations on our government channel, at no cost to Ardsley.

• As mentioned, our Library Board, with the approval of the Village Board of Trustees, entered into an agreement with the Village of Elmsford in which library services are provided to their residents for a substantial six-figure annual payment. This has enabled the library to construct an important addition to the building, at no cost to Ardsley taxpayers.