Town budget OK’d, no tax hike

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Whitehall Municipal Center.

After roughly 80 minutes of discussion the Whitehall Town Board unanimously voted to pass the tentative budget for the year 2021.

The big news that came from the discussion was at the end of the meeting, once the board had already voted to pass the budget. Highway superintendent Louis Pratt II wanted to make it perfectly clear that just because the levy that comes from Washington County is going up 1.8% that does not mean the taxes will go up.

“The tax rate will be the same as this year,” Pratt said. “The taxes shouldn’t go up with the tax levy going up 1.8%.”

Whitehall supervisor John Rozell

“No, it shouldn’t,” town supervisor John Rozell said in response.

“If it does it’s not something that the town did,” board member Chris Dudley Sr. added.

Pratt said that people will see the raise in the tax levy and assume that their taxes are going to be raised without looking at their tax bill.

“People don’t realize that,” he said.

In a phone call after the budget workshop meeting Rozell said that they are trying to make it easier for the community by not raising taxes. The way the budget is set up right now there will be no raise in taxes, and he doesn’t foresee anything from Washington County at this point that would indicate a potential raise either.

And with the recent events that have struck Whitehall in 2020 he believes that they are in a pretty good spot.

“I think we are in good shape with the pandemic and flooding and everything,” Rozell said. “We are trying to keep the taxes down because it’s a tough time.”

There were only three items in the budget that went up when they initially looked through it. The wage for the town clerk, the Whitehall Volunteer Fire Company budget and the budget for the highway. The town clerk wages and fire company budget increased by 2% respectively, while the highway budget went up 5%.

Rozell said that the reasoning for the town clerk portion increasing is because last year there was a new clerk who did not receive the usual increase. He also mentioned that the fire company gets a 2% increase every year.

There were a few wages within the budget that had to be increased at the meeting because of the increase in minimum wage that will kick in at the start of next year, such as the wage for the court clerk.

He told the board that the reason he made the budget the way he did was because of what impact the year 2020 will have moving forward.

“We have lost money now in income and the mortgage tax, sales tax. That set us back, so we have to take a little bit more out of the general fund to balance this in favor of the taxpayer,” he said.

The town board has scheduled a public hearing that will be open for discussion of the 2021 budget at the start of their next meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 21, starting at 7 p.m.