Sound Shore

Assembly members George Latimer and Amy Paulin are hosting a public hearing on the state budget at City Hall in New Rochelle this afternoon. The hearing begins at 4 p.m. and will last till 8 p.m.

Speakers have four minutes to make their case. Written comments may submitted at the hearing and until Feb. 24. For more information visit the Assembly’s website.

Assembly members George Latimer and Amy Paulin will host a community meeting about the state’s 2012-13 budget on Wednesday at New Rochelle City Hall. The meeting, at which members of the public may air their thoughts on the budget for up to four minutes, will take place in the Council Chamber from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Written comments will be accepted until Feb. 24. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget calls from more than $130 billion in spending.

The New Rochelle City Council has appointed the members of its new Citizens’ Panel on Sustainable Budgets. Todd Kern, founder of 2Revolutions LLC, described as an “education design lab,” will serve as the panel’s chairman.

Mayor Noam Bramson, who announced the appointments on his website on Tuesday, proposed the idea of convening such a panel as he and the other members of council were in the final stages of passing the 2012 city budget. It had been a contentious process, with officials grappling with the state’s property tax cap and coming close laying off firefighters, crossing guards and other workers.

Bramson had suggested the panel as a means to identify the community’s priorities and develop new approaches to crafting the budget.

According to a separate news release issued Tuesday by the city, the group will be “tasked with analyzing service delivery levels and methods in the face of dwindling resources for 2013 and beyond.”

In addition to Kern, the members of the panel are Judith Berger, David Bieber, Michael Boyle Sr., Emily Bromberg, Kyran Cassidy, Matthew Costa, Michael D’Ambrosio, Jeffrey Hastie, Linda Kelly-Fauci, Bo Kemp, Todd Kern, Martha Lopez-Hanratty, David Peters, Ann Rolett and John Rorer. Bramson will serve on the panel as well.

The city’s release said North Avenue Research would provide consulting services on a pro bono basis.

The panel will have its first meeting in February and work through July.

Stephen Mayo, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the New Rochelle City Council in the last election, has filed an article 78 lawsuit claiming the city’s new garbage collection fee is unfair and illegal.

Mayo plans to hold a press conference Tuesday morning in front of City Hall. In an interview Monday evening he said revenue from the annual fee, which was increased from $66 to $223 per dwelling at the start of the year, will be used for purposes other than collecting garbage; some of the money will go into the city’s general fund. That, he said, isn’t the way it’s supposed to work.

He said council members approved the steep fee hike in order to allow them to claim they’d held taxes below the state-imposed 2-percent cap on property tax when they passed the 2012 budget.

“Instead of going with an honest budget, they decided to get tricky about it,” he said.

The refuse fee was a sticking point during budget workshop sessions at the end of last year, but most members of council saw the increase as a necessity.

Mayor Noam Bramson said Monday evening he could not comment on an ongoing case against the city. He did say the fee was calibrated to equal the total cost of the service of picking up trash throughout the city.

The New Rochelle City Council adopted the 2012 budget Tuesday night by a vote of 5 to 2. Republicans Louis Trangucci and Richard St. Paul, the latter casting his last votes as a member of the City Council, were the two dissenters. Al Tarantino, the third Republican on the council, voted for the budget, “with serious concerns.”

The 2012 budget calls for a 5.96 percent increase in the tax rate to $185.53 per $1,000 of assessed value. City officials had anticipated a rate increase of 6.38 percent, but the total valuation of the New Rochelle’s properties turned out to be slightly higher than thought. The levy will still increase by 3.6 percent.

None of the council members seemed particularly happy with the budget. Each talked Tuesday night about the difficult choices they had to make in crafting the spending plan. But St. Paul went furthest in expressing his disdain for the budget, calling it a “gimmick.”

The nay votes from St. Paul and Trangucci prompted a scolding from Mayor Noam Bramson, who said, “The easiest thing to do in government is to leave the hard choices to others.”

The New Rochelle City Council on Tuesday spared another position it had planned to cut. Discussing the 2012 budget in advance of the public hearing on the topic, council members and City Manager Charles Strome III revealed, once again, that they had overestimated the amount the state-mandated health insurance rates would increase.

Last week, they announced they had about $1.1 million more than anticipated and would use the money to preserve six firefighter positions, all 18 crossing guards and several community service officers.

On Tuesday, they said they had another $300,000 at their disposal. They decided to use some of it preserve a recreation supervisor at the Hugh Doyle Senior Center and put the remainder in the fund balance.

The decision earned praise from the most of the half-dozen people who spoke at the public hearing. But council members still received a significant amount of criticism, much of it concerning the plan to increase the refuse collection fee from $166 to $220 per household per year.

“It’s an outrage, it really is. It should be eliminated, not increased,” Diana Mason said. She added, “You’re making citizens make choices as to whether they continue to remain in this community.”

The City Council also opted not to move forward on legislation that would have allowed its members to vote to override the state-imposed property tax cap. Council members said they hope to adopt the budget at their next meeting, scheduled for Dec. 13.

New Rochelle’s City Council on Tuesday decided to preserve six firefighter positions as well as New Rochelle’s 18 crossing guards in 2012, reversing cost-saving plans to cut the positions.

City Manager Charles Strome III told council members, who are finalizing the 2012 budget, the city would have to spend about $1 million less than anticipated on health insurance for its employees. As Strome explained, the state-determined health insurance rate increase would be about 5.5 percent, well below the 16 percent he’d allowed for in his proposed budget. He said that figure had been based on early estimates from state officials.

City Council members agreed to use the money to preserve the positions. Byron Gray, head of the firefighter’s union, called the reversal “unbelievable” and said, “Some anxiety has certainly lifted from my shoulders for awhile.”

The move will not affect the proposed tax-rate increase of 6.36 percent.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post mistakenly swapped “tax-levy increase” with “tax-rate increase.” It now reads correctly. Apologies for that.

School budget season is coming and the Pelham Board of Education wants to hear from its constituents. The district has scheduled four public meetings over the next few weeks at which board members will discuss the budget process, talk about the newly imposed 2-percent property tax cap and take suggestions from the public.

The meetings will be held at the following times and places:

Tuesday, Nov. 22, at 7:30 p.m. at the Town House;

Monday, Nov. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hutchinson School Library;

Saturday, Dec. 10, at 10:15 a.m. at the Pelham Library Community Room;

and Wednesday, Dec. 14, at 7 p.m. at the M.A.D. Cafe.

New Rochelle’s school budget passed by nearly a 2-1 margin Tuesday night. Voters also approved the library budget and elected Naomi Brickel and Rachel Relkin to the Board of Education.

Brickel and Relkin were among six candidates vying for two seats left open by Board President Sara Richmond and Board member Quay Watkins, each of whom had decided not to seek re-election.

The vote tallies:

Budget: 2,821 yes; 1,506 no

Naomi Brickel: 2,586

Rachel Relkin: 1,967

Robert Cox: 1,796

Colin Thomas: 1,111

Peter O’Keeffe: 570

Salvador Fernandez: 513

Library budget: 2,741 yes; 1,362 no

Library Board members:

Greg Varian: 2,731

Bo Kemp: 2,503

With six candidates vying for two seats on the New Rochelle Board of Education and a city full of residents still riled from a contentious budget season, voters streamed to polling stations Tuesday.

District Spokesman Paul Costiglio said at 3 p.m. that turnout was 1,859—up 13 percent over the tally from the same time last year.

Poll workers at Ward Elementary School said many seniors and college students had shown up to cast their votes, indicating, they said, the width of the spectrum of residents who care about the school’s $230,872,398 spending plan.

Nancy and Sterling Jasper, having just voted at Ward, said they were glad to support the budget.

“We moved to this community for the diversity and the education,” Nancy Jasper said. She and her husband have two children in the school system. “We accept that we will have to support our schools,” given the limits of state and federal funding.

Many other voters voiced positions similar to Jasper’s.

At the High School, Steve Green said he’s lived in New Rochelle since the mid-1960s. He voted for the school budget, he said, because “I have seen nothing but progress and I hope it continues.”

After she voted in favor of the budget, Ellen Miller Arad said, “We just want to give our kids every opportunity we can.”

Others, though, said the school district has failed to curtail spending during a time of widespread economic hardship.

Martha McCann and her husband, whose three children attended New Rochelle schools, voted against the budget.

“They’re not being responsible enough with the money,” she said of district administrators. “They could more money out of that budget.”

In neighboring Pelham, where the fiercest budget battles were waged over proposed cuts to sports programs and nursing positions, turnout was low, according District Spokeswoman Angela Cox. Pelham voters have four candidates to choose for two seats on the Board of Education. They are voting on a $63,189,318 spending plan for the next school year.