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The Lansing Town Board  passed its $5,357,479 2021 budget Wednesday after a budget hearing and a summary of how town highway services are being impacted by reductions in income due to the coronavirus pandemic.  Supervisor Ed LaVigne said that the town tax rate will be reduced by a penny, rather than the two cents originally projected, because of changes to the Town assessment.

"We had an adjustment due to the assessments," LaVigne explained. "The assessments are a moving target, and our assessments are decreasing by even $85,000. And that means that the tax rate is increased by 0.1%. That means it's it's going to go to $1.5433 (per $1,000 of assessed property value). That is still a decrease of 0.01% over last year."

Councilman Joseph Wetmore expressed his continuing concern about reduced revenue specifically for the Highway Department.  Wetmore said he is concerned about the department's ability to keep the roads in good shape if the pandemic continues to impact sales tax revenue, 80% of which helps fund the Highway Department.  A 20% reduction in Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS) is also anticipated this year, which impacts the Town's schedule for major roadwork (as opposed to maintenance).

"I'm very concerned about the long term potential," he cautioned. "I know we cut back on the amount of road work we did this year by about $200,000, and quite possibly we're going to do that again next year. And I'm just wondering what that means in terms o how much road work is getting done, how much maintenance is not getting done and how we're going to be in the long-term if this last three or four years."

LaVigne noted that sales tax revenue was up for September.  He expressed confidence in the Highway Department and Highway Superintendent Charlie Purcell and Deputy Highway Superintendent Mike Moseley for being pro-active about planning for cut-backs as soon as the pandemic lock-down began, and stressed that they have proven to be responsible when balancing the level of services with changing revenue amounts through the current crisis.

"The Highway Department has that flexibility to use the money if we're having a good year, and to pull back if we don't," LaVigne said. "They initiated this (rollback in the road construction schedule) back in March, it wasn't something I asked them to do. They said, no, we can do this and this and this, if it was a bad year for us. And that's when Cricket said we're not going to use the $400,000 of improvement. I'll use $200,000 instead."

The Town owns close to 100 miles of roads, which it performs major repairs and construction to on a revolving basis.  Currently it costs about $100,000 to pave a mile of roadway.  The Department has repeatedly under-spent its budget, and on many of those occasions the Town Board has approved spending some of that money to replace equipment or purchase new vehicles.  The department purchases the big trucks used for snow removal and other projects on a schedule that replaces one truck every two years.

Moseley maintained that the Highway Department is actually in good shape, despite cutbacks. He noted that they do cut back on equipment and road improvement in lean years, but have been able to make up those cuts in better years, thanks, he said, to a very good working relationship with the Town Board.  He said that less road improvement work was done than originally planned, but that is not to say that none was done.  he explained that road improvement is major repaving and repairs to the Town's roads, and road maintenance refers to minor repairs like filling cracks or putting a stone and oil treatment over existing pavement.  The Town only receives CHIPs dollars for major road improvement, he explained.

"It's not that we're not going to do any road improvement. We still will do road improvement. It's just going to be fewer miles.  So that's something that's positive as well. So this year we cut back, but we did Whispering Pines. We did Arrowwood, we did Pheasants Way. We did a whole entire development, which was fantastic, that definitely needed it. So we didn't do nothing this year. We did about $200,000 worth of road improvements," Moseley said.

LaVigne stressed that he trusts the Highway Department to spend responsibly, and to remain flexible, especially because of the impact of sales tax fluctuation.  He said he doesn't believe the region will go back to Phase 1 of the State's reopening plan, which had such a significant impact on sales tax, noting that the Governor just loosened some travel restrictions, allowing travelers to 'test out' of a 14 day quarantine when coming into New York.

"We had a very good September," he said. "It's 30% of above our September last year. And once again, we try to be as flexible as we can so we can make adjustments if we have to."

The budget passed 5-0.

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