The Mineola Board of Trustees passed an $18,326,099 spending plan for the 2008-2009 fiscal year, which begins on June 1 and ends May 3, 2009. Residents will see a 1.6 percent tax increase over the 2007-2008 budget, which amounts to approximately $18 per average household in Mineola for the year.

Mayor Jack M. Martins, Deputy Mayor Larry Werther and Trustees Tom Kennedy and Paul Pereira feel the budget is fiscally responsible. Mayor Martins said that nobody wants to see a tax increase, but the budget maintains all the village's current services while ensuring the village stays on solid financial footing.

The vote to pass the budget, however, was not unanimous. Trustee Paul Cusato, the sole Hometown Party member on the board, voted against the budget proposal.

Before Trustee Cusato was re-elected last month, he vowed that he would not vote against any budget that called for a tax increase. Cusato proposed reduced the tax increase by one percent so that there would be a 0.6 percent increase. He proposed moving approximately $120,000 from the village's unreserved fund balance, which is estimated to be about $1 million, into the budget.

Mayor Martins and the other trustees called Cusato's proposal gimmicky and irresponsible. Mayor Martins said the village residents deserve to have an honest budget and felt it would not be fiscally responsible for the village board to dip into the unreserved fund balance, which is essentially a savings account, to pay for items that are in the operating budget.

"That $1 million is there to address emergencies or to allow flexibility. It's not there as a gimmick to try to justify irresponsible election campaign promises," Mayor Martins said.

Trustee Kennedy said he understood what Cusato was trying to do but felt that the village has a balanced budget for 2008-2009 and the board shouldn't use the village's fund balance to supplement its budget. Deputy Mayor Werther agreed, saying the increase was responsible.

Mayor Martins said that on the Monday before the budget vote, Cusato seemed pleased with the proposed budget and congratulated the board on the numbers.

Cusato said the board worked very well together on the budget. "I think it's a respectable rate," he said.

However, Cusato said he wanted to move money from the contingency fund to offset the $100,000 less in mortgage tax revenue the village may be receiving in 2008-2009 (the village had $600,000 in revenue budgeted in 2007-2008 but $500,000 for 2008-2009). Cusato pointed out that the village board transferred money from its unreserved fund balance in 2004 because of an increased cost in state pension contributions to the village. "If we did it in the past, why not do it again. I only suggested what the mayor did in 2004," said Cusato.

However, Mayor Martins said the increase in pension costs in 2004 was an anomaly because the village's pension contribution costs increased by $700,000 that year because of a hit that the stock market took and since then, those costs have decreased.

The mayor feels the budget this year will be balanced and the rate was as low as it could go without jeopardizing services. He also believes the revenue estimates are conservative. Taking $120,000 from the village's fund balance and placing it in the operating budget would just put off paying for the expenses.

Trustee Pereira, who was sworn into office after winning the election last month, said the board worked hard to get the increase down to 1.6 percent. "To do anything more than that would have been irresponsible. It would have been with mirrors and smoke screens and, in the end, we've learned that that doesn't work. In the long term, we're going to leave this for people down the road to deal with. We're taking care of our own balanced budget now," Pereira said.

Mayor Martins suggested to Trustee Cusato to cut $120,000 from the budget. However, the mayor said the only proposal to cut that came from the trustee was to cut $4,000 from the budget line to purchase of books for the adult section of the library.

When the village board voted to reassess its commercial properties, the village board adopted the Homestead Exemption, which allows for separate tax rates for residential (homestead) and non-residential (non-homestead) properties.

While residents may be seeing a 1.6 percent tax increase, non-residential or commercial properties will be seeing a 4.23 percent increase since residential and non-residential properties now have two separate tax rates due to the Homestead exemption. The tax rate for residential properties is $2.925 per $100,000 of assessed valuation while the tax rate for non-residential properties is $7.364 per $100,000 of assessed valuation. Residential properties will be paying 48.6 percent of the village budget while non-residential properties will be paying 51.49 percent.

The village board opted to reassess its properties and adopt the Homestead exemption to end the cycle of assessment challenges that led to tax certiorari claims, which is a drain on the village budget. The tax certiorari cases should diminish as the tax rates even out.