Dear Hadley Residents:
2008 has come and gone. We ring in 2009 with the news of the country in a recession, Wall Street in shambles, the automobile industry on the verge of bankruptcy, New York State with a 15 billion dollar deficit, and the taxpayer holding the bag for all of it. Keeping this in mind, the Town Board worked very hard on the recently adopted budget to try and ease the burden on the local taxpayer. The 2009 budget has a 4.7% decrease in the General Fund tax levy, a 0.6% increase in the Highway Fund tax levy, as well as decreases in all the special districts with the exception of the Fire Department.
The decrease in the General Fund was accomplished by no pay increases for the Town Supervisor, the Town Board, the Town Justices and the Town Assessor, the elimination of 1 part time position (open position that will not be filled), switching to a new health insurance plan that not only saves money for the Town but also saves money for the employees who contribute to the health plan, using hard numbers to figure New York State retirement contributions as opposed to using projections that typically are over inflated, and every department doing their part to save taxpayer dollars. The increase in the Highway Fund is due to a dramatic increase in the price of road salt and many other products that the Highway Department uses to keep our roads in great shape.
People in the Town of Hadley will see a major increase in the Fire Protection line on their tax bill. While the Town has no control over the Fire Department's budget put together by the Board of Fire Commissioners, they gave good reasoning behind the increase. The entire increase is due to funding for the Emergency Squad. Because of the lack of volunteers to run the squad, the Board of Fire Commissioners was forced to staff the Emergency Squad with paid personnel, and we now have staffing 24/7. Before this staffing change was made, the Ambulance was not getting out on calls and many times people were forced to wait for upwards of 1 hour for emergency help to be dispatched from some other district, in what is, in many instances, a life threatening situation. Since the Board of Fire Commissioners has implemented the 24/7 paid staff, our squad now has the best response time in the county. The Towns of Hadley and Lake Luzerne along with the Board of Fire Commissioners will be working together throughout 2009 to find ways to make this essential service more affordable to the taxpayers.
With the help of the Highway Crew and numerous volunteers and donations we were able to accomplish a lot in 2008. There were many upgrades to Smead Memorial Park (new bandstand, new fencing, new bleacher and bench, and newly refurbished safety mulch in the playground area), the Senior/Community Center is framed up and progressing along, new guard rails were installed along Old Corinth Road to improve safety, new gates were installed at the Woodard Ave. canoe take out and Historic River Trail, and many other small projects that seemingly go unnoticed but are much appreciated.
2009 brings with it a relatively unknown President and a Governor committed to balancing the budget at any expense that could make this a very difficult year for local governments. As a Town Board we look forward to these challenges and are committed to being fiscally responsible and helping the taxpayers in the Town of Hadley get through these trying times.
Respectfully
Arthur " Mo" Wright
Supervisor Town of Hadley
