Spending Per Capita - Piermont vs. Nyack

A Village Trustee recently sent Unify Piermont an article describing Nyack’s tax increase for next year at 9.5%, presumably to be compared favorably with Piermont’s .39% tax increase.

Nyack’s budget is $5.1 million, Piermont's $4.8 million.

Another Trustee estimated at a public meeting that Nyack pays Orangetown $1.2 million for police services, so let’s add that to the $5.1 million.

Based on the latest Census Bureau estimates, that means the Nyack residents are paying $926 each for Village services including police protection. The same number in Piermont is almost double, $1,845.

In the latest budget, Piermont increased spending at 3.44%. Unify Piermont did some projections. It will take Nyack until 2023, another 13 years, to catch up assuming Nyack increases spending 9.5% each year and Piermont keeps its spending increases to 3.44%.

If you can still afford to live in Piermont in 2023, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that Nyack’s taxes are finally higher. However, there are several points to keep in mind:

1. Since 2000, Piermont’s spending has increased 88%, an average of almost 9% annually under the current and previous administrations. So the chance of 3.44% for the next 13 years is slim unless we elect a Village Board with more concern for the taxpayers in Piermont.

2. Why 0.39% for Piermont this year and 9.5% for Nyack? Well, one answer might be that Mayor Shields has announced he is not running for re-election. Is Mayor Sanders running again?

3. Since the last official Census in 2000, the Census Bureau estimates that Nyack’s population has increased and Piermont’s has declined. Obviously, if this trend continues it will take longer for Nyack to catch-up. Piermont taxpayers may have to wait until 2030 to be on par.

The answer to the problem is obvious; Piermont spends too much for our population base. Since we can’t grow our population, we need to cut spending and/or combine services with sister villages.

This message was prepared by Unify Piermont which is dedicated to returning responsible, representative government to Piermont.

Unify Piermont is a group made up of village residents from all areas of the village, and from all political parties. We need to create a local village government that will address the problems created by the current and previous administrations.

We need your help, your input and your involvement. If you share our concerns about Village taxes, Village debt and the lack of any meaningful communication from our Village Board; than e-mail us at unifypiermont@live.com with your name and address or leave a message at 845-613-7675. We will notify you when a new posting goes up on our website at http://www.unifypiermont.blogspot.com/.

A Review of Police Salaries in Piermont

UNIFY PIERMONT (unifypiermont@live.com)

A Review of Police Salaries in Piermont

A recent article in The Rockland Express discussed police salaries in Clarkstown, Ramapo and Orangetown. It indicated that the entry-level base salaries are respectively $61,905, $40,418 and $43,475. While Piermont has only experienced police officers, it did get Unify Piermont thinking about our Police budget.

We have previously published a blog identifying the eight full time police personnel as the top eight wage earners in Piermont. We thought that further analysis might be interesting since the Village Board seems incapable of doing anything about this, our largest expense (see blog on functional budget).

Excluding the Chief and the Part-time Policeman, the other seven officers received $697,000 in base salary in 2009, an average of just under $100,000. Excluding the Sergeant, the Patrolmen earned an average of $97,600.

Vacation, holiday and longevity pay added another $82,000 or almost $12,000 a man. While these items are treated separately for municipal budgeting purposes, in reality they should be considered as part of base pay. So the average Piermont Policeman, excluding the Chief and the Part-time Policeman, earned an average of just over $111,000 before overtime.

Overtime added another $85,000 to the Police budget or another $12,000 per man. By Unify Piermont’s calculations, this was just under 1100 hours of overtime. The thought occurred to us, if we are paying so much in overtime, perhaps we need more part-time policemen.

Obviously, some overtime is required. Our police officers are very professional and they are not going to stop in the middle of writing a ticket, pursuing a suspect or interrogating a witness because it is the end of the shift.

On the other hand, we have a part-time patrolman who worked just over 900 hours last year for $22,000. One would assume that overtime is frequently required for special events. Unify Piermont understands that the Rockland Sheriff's Department has a voluntary Sheriff’s Deputy Reserve Force, comprised of 100 trained volunteers, that in some cases can be called upon for support for special events. Has the Village investigated this?

It would seem that there is a potential for some savings in overtime, if the Village Board wants to achieve it. Unify Piermont expects that this suggestion, as with so many others over the years, will be dismissed without careful consideration, but as the lottery saying goes “Hey, you never know”.

One last observation, although the Village consistently budgets for $69,000 in police overtime, it always runs over that.

This message was prepared by Unify Piermont which is dedicated to returning responsible, representative government to Piermont.

Unify Piermont is a group made up of village residents from all areas of the village, and from all political parties. We need to create a local village government that will address the problems created by the current and previous administrations.

We need your help, your input and your involvement. If you share our concerns about Village taxes, Village debt and the lack of any meaningful communication from our Village Board; than e-mail us at unifypiermont@live.com with your name and address or leave a message at 845-613-7675. We will notify you when a new posting goes up on our website at www.unifypiermont.blogspot.com.

Village of Piermont - Estimated Functional Budget

Double click on image to enlarge

One of the difficulties in understanding exactly where we spend our tax dollars in Piermont is that the accounting system does not present full information by department. For example, just under $900,000 of various employee benefits are treated as separate line items. Clearly, the level of these costs is driven by how many employees the Village has and what they are paid.

In an attempt to resolve this problem, Unify Piermont has developed a functional budget for the Village using salaries, headcount and common sense to allocate various costs to the Village departments. It must be stressed that the following numbers, based on the recently approved budget, are only reasonable approximations.

As examples of some of the assumptions used, both street lighting and third-party costs of the Village Engineer have been included in the DPW. The third-party Auditor expense has been included with the Village Clerk/Treasurer. And most benefits, with the exception of retirement costs, have been allocated based on headcount. The Board of Trustees headcount was excluded; presumably they do not receive any benefits beyond their stipend and social security.

Retirement costs were allocated based on salaries. A number of other assumptions were also made.

This message was prepared by Unify Piermont which is dedicated to returning responsible, representative government to Piermont.

Unify Piermont is a group made up of village residents from all areas of the village, and from all political parties. We need to create a local village government that will address the problems created by the current and previous administrations.

We need your help, your input and your involvement. If you share our concerns about Village taxes, Village debt and the lack of any meaningful communication from our Village Board; than e-mail us at unifypiermont@live.com with your name and address or leave a message at 845-613-7675. We will notify you when a new posting goes up on our website at www.unifypiermont.blogspot.com.