Greece Town Supervisor Bill Reilich and the Greece Town Board passed their 2021 budget this evening at their regular meeting. The budget includes another town tax decrease and shows a decrease in the overall size of the town budget, meaning that the appropriations are lower than 2020. Our tax rate for 2020 was $6.2246 per thousand dollars of assessed value. The 2021 Adopted Budget is estimated at $6.16 per thousand dollars of assessed value, a decrease of nearly 6 ½ cents.
There are goals in this budget and there are priorities for our residents. We will continue to embrace technological innovations, cost cutting measures, and keep our focus on keeping our community safe and vibrant while continuing to provide the amenities that our residents have grown to love and appreciate in place. We are ready for any challenge because we realize that we are at our best when we work together.
The newly adopted budget is nearly $1M below the tax cap, includes no borrowing and retires debt of nearly $3M. Additionally, the budget includes the 100% cash payment toward the new Children’s Library Expansion which is on track to open in mid-2021 and our new ice rink as well.
“We have worked hard the past 7+ years to prepare for this (COVID) or any sort of emergency. There is no doubt that 2020 was a difficult year for everyone, but by careful budgeting and planning we have been able to absorb the cuts to our revenue and not place any further burdens on our taxpayers” Supervisor Reilich said. ”When I took office in 2014, the town was balancing its budgets using its reserve funds and tax rates were slowly trending upwards. Since that time, we have presented budgets that were not dependent on reserve funds and we have steadily worked on decreasing taxes. We made the commitment to make sustained rate reduction a part of our budget effort, and having a balanced budget has allowed us to do that” Reilich said.