Riverhead Town budget

The Riverhead Town Board adopted a final operating budget Tuesday night, amending Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith’s preliminary budget to add $105,500 from the capital projects reserve fund to pay for a second new code enforcement officer and a part-time paralegal to focus on code enforcement cases.

The state comptroller says budget documents should show a few years’ worth of budget data. Not in Riverhead, where the budget shows no actual numbers for the prior year or year-to-date.

Riverhead Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith has proposed a $100,390,400 total town operating budget for 2020, calling for a 2.76% spending increase and a 2.58% increase in the town-wide tax rate.

Riverhead Town missed a March 31 county filing deadline to be eligible for $1.7 million in sales tax revenues to fund town police services in 2019. The county legislature accepted the late filing at its Sept. 4 meeting.

The Riverhead Town Board failed to adopt an operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Again. It has not adopted an operating budget for five of the last nine fiscal years — despite the clear mandate of state law. There are 97,690,700 reasons why you should care.

The changes aired publicly at last week's work session are not incorporated into the preliminary budget set for a public hearing tomorrow afternoon.

Riverhead Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith delivered her first operating budget yesterday, proposing a 3.9 percent spending increase in the three town-wide funds — the general fund, highway fund and street-lighting district — to $59.1 million. Total town spending in 2019 would rise to just under $97.7 million.

In a special meeting yesterday afternoon called at the request of Councilwoman Jodi Giglio — the statutory deadline for budget adoption — the Riverhead Town Board adopted an operating budget for 2018 unchanged from the budget presented by Supervisor Sean Walter in September.

Time is running out on the Riverhead Town Board’s opportunity to comply with N.Y. State Law and adopt an operating budget for the coming fiscal year.

The proposed spending plan would mean an “average increase of $45” to town taxpayers, according to Supervisor Sean Walter, who said the budget is balanced and fully funded.