By CRAIG FREILICH
North Country This Week

POTSDAM -- The village Board of Trustees has approved a change in local law permitting it to exceed the state-mandated property tax cap for its $10.7 million 2019-20 budget.

The 2019-20 tax levy is set at $3,926,752, which is $108,914 or 2.8% more than last year’s levy of $3,817,838. The tax levy is the amount to be raised by taxes and fees for the village’s general fund expenses, and is the figure used to calculate compliance with the tax cap rule.

The cap is set generally by the state at 2% a year, but the actual limit before a resolution like the one approved by the board on Monday night is required and is subject to a complex formula the state has devised, which takes into account inflation and several other factors.

The board has set a vote on the budget for Friday, April 26 at 1 p.m.

Overall spending for the next fiscal year is up $252,318 or 2.4 percent from the 2018-19 budget.

The property tax rate will be $18.28753 per thousand dollars of a property’s assessed value, an increase of 0.5% from the current tax rate of 18.19708%.

That translates to $1,828.75 on property worth $100,000 compared with $1,819.71 in the current fiscal year. That’s $9.04 more.

Revenues in all categories from all sources are expected to rise by 1.6%.

The village’s preliminary budget for fiscal year 2019-20 can be viewed at http://vi.potsdam.ny.us/content/News/View/45:field=documents;/content/Documents/File/701.pdf.

No changes are expected between now and the budget vote.