New Hyde Park Village Budget Reduces Part-timer's Days and Ups Meter Amounts

The budget, which Mayor Daniel Petruccio described Tuesday night at the budget meeting as “one of the more difficult budgets we’ve ever had to deal with,” involved changes in personnel payments to help offset increases in health care costs, workman's compensation payments and retirement benefits.

State retirement benefits went up from $230,191 in the 2010-2011 adopted budget to $334,589 in this budget; workers compensation premiums went up from $110,000 previous year's budget to $127,500; and medical, dental and vision benefits went up 13 percent from last year from $611,992 to $654,838.

To help offset these increases in expenses, part-time employees in the judicial, treasurer, clerk and safety inspection areas will work one less day a week int his budget.

Another way the Village has decided to increase revenue is by raising parking meter fees. Instead of being a quarter for a half hour instead of an hour. The Village is anticipating that this will bring in $200,000, up from $92,347 that was received to-date last year. Parking vouchers will also increase from $3 to $4.

The total amount of revenue the Village is anticipating for the 2011-2012 fiscal year is $5,630,770.72. The tax rate is 19.53, which is an increase of 4.99 percent. That increase is equivalent to an extra $50 for someone with a house assessment of $5,400, Deputy Mayor Robert Lofaro said.

This budget includes a contingency account of $32,000. This has been drawn down from $108,789.20 that was in that line to date last year.

In this budget there is $10,000 for cultural programs, which is up from the $5,000 2010-2011 adopted budget. Lofaro noted that this budget line sometimes involves the Village laying out money for events, such as a magician at the , but they are sometimes reimbursed by donations from groups such as .

The Village at the end of the last that was going to be used for the . The money to make up for that lost grant came out of the budget this year through not purchasing a truck, which cost about $133,000, according to Lofaro.

He would have wanted to do more road work and to have more part-time help for the various projects in the budget this summer if the budgetary situation had been different.