North Salem Votes to Override Tax Cap for 2025 Budget

NORTH SALEM, N.Y. - The North Salem Town Board has voted to adopt a 2025 budget of $12.5 million that overrides the state tax cap.

It was the third time in about a dozen years that it’s done so, Supervisor Warren Lucas said.

The $12,527,025 spending plan is up 3.51 percent over the current total budget of $12,101,822. 

According to the preliminary budget, which had to be passed by Dec. 20, the allowed tax levy cap is 2.7989 percent.

The town is going over the cap by $281,192.19.

“It was very difficult this year because we had to bust the tax cap. I think it’s a good budget. It was a lot of hard work, so I thank everyone, especially you Warren,” Councilman Martin Aronchick told Lucas at the board's special meeting on Friday, Dec. 13.

“I appreciate that. I never like to go above the tax cap,” Lucas said, noting that he had looked at past budgets and found that the times that the town had to were when it had started up a new taxing district, such as the Peach Lake Sewer District, the Salem Acres Water District, and the latest one, the Papst Water District.

(The tax cap law was first implemented in 2012.)

When calculating the available tax cap, the state just adds everything together. “Not everybody’s in every taxing district,” he pointed out later.

Voting to adopt the plan Friday were Lucas, Deputy Supervisor Peter Kamenstein, and Aronchick. Councilpersons Katherine Daniels and Brent Golisano were not at the meeting.

The money goes fast.

“Everything costs more now; it’s just inflation,” Lucas said, adding: “You never feel good about doing this, going over the 2 percent tax cap, but I think that over the years we’ve kept it to reasonable increases.”

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Although the tax rate itself is going down by 2.221 percent, some folks will be paying more because their homes have increased in value.

For someone who owns a $1 million home, the town tax would be $4,004, Lucas said.

The total tax levy in 2024 was $7,525,396.25. In 2025, it will be $8,011,732.68. This covers the general, highway, and the special districts (water, sewer, lighting) funds. Folks only pay the special district taxes for the districts they actually live in.

The average tax increase will be 6.46 percent, if the budget passes as it now stands. 

North Salem expects to get 58.52 percent of its revenue from property taxes in 2025. This current fiscal year, that figure was 58.31 percent. Revenue from other sources accounted for 41.699 percent in 2024; in 2025, that’s 41.48 percent.

A public hearing was held on Tuesday, Dec. 10, and carried over to Friday, Dec. 13. No members of the public spoke.
The reasons for going over the tax cap were listed in the override resolution. They account for a 3.8 percent hike in spending and do not include salaries and other normal increases.

Trash hauling costs are going up, for one.

The town’s new garbage contract is $851,146.88, which is 6.2 percent or $49,518.82, higher than its current agreement.

Last January, it acquired the Pabst Water District with its yearly budget of $63,020.

State pension costs have risen by $85,947.

Health insurance increases were provided in 2023 after the budget was finalized.

That increase was estimated at 7 percent and for some coverage options that was really 14.9 percent. That additional expense from the last budget, plus the estimated insurance expenses in 2025 of 7 percent, means that it’s going to cost the town $89,565 more.

Ambulance services (both Advanced Life Support and Basic Life Support) increased by $38,913 to $561,377 because of the addition last summer of a fourth “fly car” for 12 hours a day.

North Salem is one of eight northern Westchester municipalities that make up the Advanced Life Support Consortium. 

In 2023, Westchester EMS (WEMS) informed members that its call volume had more than doubled in the past two decades. This caused average response times to rise to nearly 10 minutes in 2022.

Previous response times had been between eight and nine minutes.

An additional ALS “fly car” was needed, especially during daylight hours.

Liability insurance coverage is increasing from $146,585 to an estimated $168,572 even though, Lucas said, the town’s deductible went up from $2,000 to $10,000.

Finally, the town has hired a new maintenance person at a cost of $28,000.

SALARIES

The town supervisor’s salary is going from $99,644.40 to $104,128.40, a difference of 4.5 percent.

Town board members salaries are going from $18,632.70 to $19,471, or 4.5 percent more.

The deputy supervisor gets that amount plus a $4,000 stipend for his extra duties.

Town justice salaries (there are two) are going from $39,841.80 to $41,634.50, or 4.5 percent more.

Town clerk’s salary goes from $93,908.16 to $99,064.03, or 5.5 percent. That was because the clerk’s salary was incorrectly calculated last year and everyone got a certain raise that the clerk didn’t get, Lucas explained.

The receiver of taxes’ salary is going from $85,520.16 to $91,368.57, or 6.8 percent more. That was done to get it slightly more in line with the salaries of tax receivers in other municipalities.

The town’s highway superintendent has multiple jobs. In addition to his primary duties, he is superintendent of parks. He also maintains the cemeteries and is responsible for the parking lots in Croton Falls.

All told, his paycheck will rise from $141,392.6 to $147,755.31, or 4.5 percent.

The average town employee’s raise will be 4.5 percent.

WATER WOES

The town has had to truck in water for the residents of the Sunset Ridge Water District while it tries to locate the source of an apparent leak in the system.

So far, it’s loaded about 48,000 gallons of H2O into the reservoir. That will be topped off as needed, Lucas said.
The town hired experts to deploy “listening devices” to track down the leak.

Lucas estimated that 12,000 gallons a day are being lost.

There are three wells supplying the district. Two are fine, but “by themselves can’t keep the system full with the aquifer lower,” he said in a Facebook post. 

None of the wells are pumping at capacity. All are pumping at lower rates, one pump is pulling in air even though it was lowered.

“Hopefully the aquifer will hopefully rise with the rain and additional water in the reservoir,” Lucas said later.

The third well was pumping, but taking the water column down to the point where “it was pumping air at times,” he said.

That well used to pump 54 gallons a minute. Now that’s about 30 gallons a minute.

To get enough water, the pump has to go full throttle about 22 hours a day.

“That’s not a good thing,” Lucas said.

Plans are to replace one of the meters in the pumphouse just in case it’s been giving inaccurate readings. The town will continue to search for the source of the leak.

“Hopefully it doesn’t get worse,” Lucas said, noting that – with one exception – no one’s seemed to have “been out of water.”

“If the aquifer were back up, we wouldn’t have that issue,” he said. 

Meanwhile, the Pabst Water District is losing about 13,000 gallons a day. Experts were hunting down the source of that leak as well.

According to Lucas, the town is also working to bring a fourth well back online. It had been shut down in 2010 due to radiological contaminants. 

Since 2017, it has been able to “remove 100 percent of the radiological contaminants in the other wells using a filter system,” he said, adding that the town is working with contractors and the county Department of Health to get the fourth well up and running “as soon as possible.”