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 3% 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 contributed to the improvement of McDowell Park and Bicentennial Park, 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. We will be sharing fuel with Dobbs Ferry when their new highway garage opens. We have an inter-municipal agreement with Hastings for disposing organic waste. We have spoken to other municipalities about sharing the costs and use of highway equipment.

• 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 and with police and fire equipment.

• 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 this year.

• 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.

• 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.