The Greenburgh Town Board last night approved the 2005 budget. The town wide budgetwill be $13,790,483. The town wide property tax rate per $1,000 of taxable assessed valuation increased $1.38 from $5.91 to $7.29 a 23.35% increase. The average Town Wide taxpayer, based upon a taxable assessed value of $15,000, will pay $109.34 in property taxes, an additional $20.70 over 2004.  The town wide budgetincludes the villages.

The Town Outside budget increased by $2,804,068 from $49,028,256 (2004) to $51,832,324 (2005). The property tax rate, for the Unincorporated Town, per $1,000 of taxable assessed valuation increased $9.08 from $111.93 to $121.01 an 8.11% increase. The average Town Unincorporated taxpayer, based upon a taxable assessed value of $15,000, will pay $1,815.22 in property taxes, an additional $136.18 over 2004.The town outside budgetincludes only the unincorporated section of town.

I was the only member of the Town Board to vote against the budget. I did not support the hiring of an additional 10 new full time employees. I believe that we could have saved significant costs by thinking out of the box: more part time workers if necessary or the use of overtime in our public works department. We must keep Greenburgh affordable!

We also have to think long range. The libraryis proposing a 20 million expansion which will be voted on in 2005 by the public. 20 million is about a 4% tax hike on top of existing tax hikes. Since so much of our budgetis personnel, hiring additional people at this time will make it difficult to avoid future double digit tax hikes.

The December 13^th Town Board meeting can be watched on our web site: www.greenburghny.com (under archived meetings).  The budgetwill also be posted on our web site.

PAUL FEINER