Beacon cuts tax increase down to 5%

By Maeleeke J. Lavan
Poughkeepsie Journal

BEACON -- With one final push from taxpayers to ease the potential tax burden of the 2003 budget, city officials were able to scale back increases to 5 percent.

''This is like a miracle,'' resident and business owner Gwen Crenshaw said. ''When you don't have increases on your job to coincide with how they want to raise property taxes, it's killing the people.''

The $16.8 million budget, adopted at a special meeting Wednesday, reflects a 9 percent spending increase over the current one.

After more than an hour of discussion, the council voted 6-1 in favor of the budget amendments and the 5 percent tax increase.

''I think this council has really worked very hard and spent many hours thinking about the community ... and without depleting services,'' Deanna Leake, R-1st Ward said.

Amendments presented at Monday's city council meeting slimmed tax increases from 7 percent down to 6, but that didn't satisfy the majority. So another meeting was set for Wednesday.

Overtime costs trimmed

At that meeting, the council agreed to reduce a total of $47,000 in overtime estimates for police officers and detectives adding up to more than $100,000 in budget reductions. About $300,000 of the city's fund balance was also used to prevent further tax increases.

A contracted attorney and funding for already-purchased equipment were also eliminated from the budget.

Though cutbacks saved taxpayers some money in the long run, some budget additions, including employee contract obligations and skyrocketing insurance costs, made increases inevitable.

''Though we would've liked it to be less, doing this provides the necessary services to the residents,'' Steve Gold, D-4th Ward, said of tax reductions.

Lee Kyriacou, Democratic councilman-at-large, cast the only opposing vote ''because it's a tax increase.''

''I think there are still some things we can take out,'' he said.

Eleanor Thompson, D-2nd Ward, said she could live with the budget.

''This should make the Beacon residents a little more relieved,'' she said. ''It's not 3 percent, but it's really not 7 (percent