BY ADAM ATKINSONNorth Country This Week

POTSDAM -- The village board held a public budget work session on its proposed 2024-2025 budget following a public hearing on the tentative fiscal plan for the coming year.

The board convened the session and hearing on April 15.

Budget numbers are still a work in process, but the plan thus far calls for the property tax levy to increase slightly by 1.9 percent from $3,822,783 to $3,896,392. Tax rate for the general fund in 2024-25 is also expected to climb slightly over last year’s by 1.86 percent to probably about $17.48 per $1,000 of assessed property value over the 2023-24 rate of $17.16.

Total appropriations for 2024-25 in the general fund are currently estimated to be $7,763,767 versus total appropriations of $7,518,322 for the current year.

Only one comment from the public was leveled during the hearing held April 15.

Village resident Allen Gontz questioned why the 2024-2025 budget line item for projected police overtime was set at $43,000 which he said was "well over" the amount for the current year.

"Especially when there isn't a reduction in salary," Gontz said.

During the work session, village treasure Isabelle Gates-Shult, responded to Gontz's question.

Gates-Shult said with the new Clear Gov software used to craft the coming year's budget, the village and the police department can more closely scrutinize the department budgets and make the whole process more efficient. This will be the first year the village is using the software and it is leading to budgets for departments being crafted differently than in year's past, village officials said during discussion.

"What we were finding was that revenues and expenditures weren't aligning," the treasurer said. "In a balanced budget, if you have revenue you have to tie it to expenditure. That wasn't happening in our budget. We were getting revenue from grant reimbursement... that was used for overtime, but we weren't accounting that in our expenditures. So because of that, the budget is off balance."

"So you are going to see a significant increase in that number," she said. Gates-Shult said however, the new budget form shows where the money was coming from.

"It wasn't a personnel issue, it was a change in how revenues are tracked," Village Police Chief Mike Ames said.

"Perfect, thank you for the clarification, I really appreciate it," Gontz said.

Ames walked through his department budget for the public and trustees.

A second public budget review session was to be held April 16.

The board will hold a special meeting Monday, April 29 at 6 p.m. to vote on the final draft of the 2024-2025 budget.