Highlights from the September 23, 2024 Meeting of the Tompkins County Expanded Budget Committee

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Understanding the 2025 Recommended Tompkins County Budget

• The recommended 2025 Tompkins County Budgetwas prepared by the County Administrator and delivered to the Legislature on September 3. The recommended budget totals $252.3M, with revenues made up primarily of local property taxes (levy), sales tax receipts, and State and federal funding.
• The proposed total property tax levy is $55.7M, which is $2.3M, or 4.34%, higher than 2024. If passed, this would result in a $138 increase in the property tax bill for the owner of a median-priced ($300,000) home.
• Departmental and agency budgets can be found in the 2025 Recommended Budgetor in the links in the title of each section below.
• As part of this budget development process all departments and funded not-for-profit agencies were asked to submit a budget with a 5% reduction due to cost increases and constraintson available funds for one-time use.
• Departments and agencies can make over-target requests as part of the budget process, which they detail during presentations to the Expanded Budget Committee. Over-target requests are detailed in departmental and agency budgets in the online budget system (links above and below). Some over-target requests are included in the recommended budget, others are made for the Legislature to consider when voting on the budget.
• Highlights below focus on the over-target requests or significant changes proposed by departments and agencies during the budget process.
• For more detail, read the County Administrator's 2025 Budget Message.

Tompkins County District Attorney

The budget for the Tompkins County District Attorney's Office was presented, proposing cutting an attorney position as part of the required 5% reduction. $121,779 was recommended in the budget to restore the position.

District Attorney Matt Van Houten spoke about the challenges his office faces, including losing ground in a competitive market for attorney salaries.

A new Centralized Arraignment Part (CAP) attorney stipend program was proposed for $125,885 but was not recommended. The program would utilize assistant district attorneys being paid $350 stipends to be on-call for morning or evening arraignments before a judge. The system currently only includes on-call defense attorneys and judges without prosecutors present.

Assigned Counsel Program

The Assigned Counsel department's budget was able to absorb a $14,418 5% cut in office expenses because staff positions are funded by State grant funds.

Department of Probation

Tompkins County Probation staff presented their department's budget. The budget includes 32 employees supporting 493 individuals in the community on active supervision and 61 pre-sentence investigations.

The department would close its Day Reporting program at a savings of $74,000 under the 5% cut scenario. Staff explained that Day Reporting client numbers are low, and it is not mandated by New York State, though if it were cut it might result in less structured pre-trial and re-entry stabilization for vulnerable clients. The budget recommends providing the department $74,000 in one-time funds in 2025 to allow time to increase program utilization and reevaluate for 2026.

Assessment Department

The Tompkins County Assessment Department presented its budget, including that a 5% cut would reduce one position, travel and training costs, some commercial real estate data sources, and postage.

A $16,000 over-target request was made and is recommended to promote an assistant real property appraiser position. $180,000 was also recommended to convert to a new computer appraisal database; the funds would be put in contingency in case the costs are covered by a New York State grant. The new software would support both staff and members of the public accessing assessment data.

The Legislature recently asked the department to provide an over-target request outlining what it might need for annual equity maintenance at the level it would like to provide, this 4-employee, $350,000 request was not recommended. Staff reported that the new database may bring new functionality that would save current staff time and resources.

County Administration

The Tompkins County Administration Department presented its budget, with the recommended restoration of a 5% budget cut to hours spread across the department's 13 employees. The county administrator spoke about the necessity of the department's positions, as they actively support all other County departments and community agencies.

Over-target requests for restored personnel hours ($99,713), the Community Justice Center's project director position and program costs ($81,464), the one-time costs of an employee climate survey in 2025 ($60,000), and software to provide community email newsletters ($20,000) were all recommended.

$100,000 to maintain the County's online language access and translation efforts and $18,000 to mail all residents information about County services were not recommended.