ROCKLAND — Rockland City Manager James Chaousis presented a proposed 2016 $21.6 million budget at a special meeting of the Rockland City Council, Wednesday, April 22. This budget, Chaousis said in his memo to the councilors: ”frames an 8.59 percent increase and does not reflect the final city budget. It does not reflect irrational increases in the costs of service but it does represent unchanged services in an extremely changing landscape. This year’s budget process will be extremely difficult.”

(See attached PDF for his entire letter.)

The proposed budget represents an increase of $2.1 million over the 2015 budget of $19.5 million. The Wednesday meeting marked the beginning of the budget process for the city, with meetings scheduled through June 3.

Chaousis said increases ranged from rising costs of labor and healthcare. That, coupled with decreasing revenue from non-property related taxes and fees, such as motor vehicle registration reimbursements and cable franchise fees, contribute to the changing fiscal landscape Rockland residents will face.

Last year the City used $100,000 from designated reserve funds to mitigate the budget’s effect on city property taxpayers.

“It’s essentially like taking $100,000 out of your savings account to pay your operating expenses,” said Councilor Larry Pritchett.

Chaousis wrote in his report, “The City has sacrificed city service through budgets in the last few years to compensate and relieve the taxpayer, but the issue has outlived any compensation mechanisms.”

Over the past 10 years, the average rate of annual growth of the city budget has been 3.26 percent, while the school budget’s annual rate of growth has been 5.81 percent (over the past 20 years, it has been 8.8 percent annually, according to Chaousis). At the same time, annual property value growth has been but .39 percent.

This year coming year, the RSU 13 school budget is proposed to increase 18.6 percent from 2015.

“Before I progress through the elements and considerations of the budget, I want to advise on one final but important component,” write Chaousis, in his memo. “The City of Rockland is poised for tremendous economic rebounding. As I illustrate further in the budget document, the years in which Rockland enjoyed lower tax rates was when development was flourishing in the city. All signs point to this happening again soon. Yet, we are forced to consider whether the city can endure funding all programs until that date or rebuild those programs when development returns. Please consider the delicate relationship between an escalating growth in the tax rate and the regressive nature it will have on the greatly anticipated development.”

At the meeting, Mayor Frank Isganitis reflected on comments by Chaousis, “that where we’ve worked really hard to try to keep the growth of the city budget flat, I think, on some levels we’ve exacerbated the problem with the overall increase that’s coming up on the school side.”

Isganitis said, “We have folks who come year after year and say ‘just cut 10 percent.’ So it begs the question, what can you live with 10 percent less of? With fire and EMS, do we want to be 10 percent less prepared?”

The council has scheduled meetings with each department within the city to determine some of these questions. Every Wednesday from now until June 3 will be devoted to a specific department within the city system. These departments include Fire and EMS, Police, Public Works/Solid Waste, Library and Recreation, and Sewer.

“We’re going to be taking a lot of people away from their families for a lot of time in getting through this process, us included,” the mayor concluded.