Press release:
Genesee County and a number of its municipal partners this week released their New York State mandated efficiency plan, demonstrating a projected local savings of approximately $14.3 million for the years covering 2017-2019. Joining in with the County on the shared services initiative is the City of Batavia, towns of Alexander, Byron, Bethany, Darien, Le Roy, Pavilion, Pembroke and the villages of Corfu, Le Roy and Oakfield.
While the plan is a requirement of the recent New York State Property Tax Rebate program, local municipalities have been streamlining programs, cutting discretionary spending, and sharing services for decades, i.e., combined dispatch, snow and ice contracts; shared highway equipment projects and municipal workers’ compensation pools and youth services administration sharing, as well as the privatization of ambulance services, which saved the City of Batavia in excess of $2 million six or seven years ago.
The local municipalities have achieved the most notable savings recently through shared assessment and code enforcement functions, shared waste water facilities between the City and Town of Batavia, sharing of County Health Department functions between Genesee and Orleans counties, workforce reductions, privatization of refuse collection by the City and the anticipated sale of the County Nursing Home.
According to the program’s requirement, the efficiency plan will be submitted to the State Division of Budget so that homeowners are able to receive their rebate checks in the Fall of 2016.
“Compiling the efficiency plan has been a valuable exercise in self-assessment and a worthwhile review of the way we have operated over the past dozen years," said Genesee County Manager Jay Gsell. "As local leaders, we need to continue to communicate with our residents regarding the savings we have accomplished, the difficult decisions we have had to make to cut programs and staff, and our plans for redefining what our county and our partners in local government do.
"Unlike school districts in New York State who are also required to submit efficiency plans and live with the property tax cap, other local governments in complying with the four year old tax cap/levy freeze are unable to exclude long-term debt from the tax-cap mandate, which in turn resulted in two to three Genesee County municipalities being unable to participate in this Efficiency Plan as they will likely have to exceed the tax-cap percentage growth factor due to water district debt funding. The New York State Executive and Legislative branches need to level the playing field for tax cap compliance for all units of local government/public agencies.”
Counties across the state continue to provide and fund essential programs and services as mandated by the State, while also seeing revenue decrease with the property tax cap, flat or falling sales tax revenue, and rising costs for health benefits, materials and equipment and double digit New York State pension assessments. However, Genesee County government along with the surrounding local municipalities have found ways to continue providing these crucial programs and services even while funds decrease, as demonstrated in the jointly submitted efficiency plan.
