Smithtown budget would boost spending on public safety, parks; hike town workers' pay 

Smithtown officials this week presented a $119.9 million budget draft that would modestly increase spending on public safety and parks along with pay for town workers.

The 204-page document is on the town website and will get a public hearing Oct. 21. Smithtown’s Town Board typically schedules a budget vote in the weeks following the hearing. A separate capital spending plan will be released in November.

Property tax levy and garbage fees, the biggest town items on most tax bills, would increase to a combined $1,888 for a house assessed at $5,500.

St. James residents, though, would see water district taxes decrease about 66%, or more than $40, because replacement of a water main cost less than initially projected. The townwide levy for highway funds also would drop slightly.

"We’ve made significant road and sidewalk improvements, completed major drainage & culvert rehabilitation, and by the end of this year we will have constructed off-street parking lots in our three downtowns," Supervisor Edward Wehrheim wrote in his annual budget message, which also cited work on parks and the town’s first master plan update in decades, which he said was nearly complete. "We’ve done all of this, despite worldwide pandemic, economic inflation and a handful of natural disasters."

James Bouklas, president of the civic group We Are Smithtown, who has called for more checks on Smithtown development, said the draft's portrait of solid municipal finances was "proof we don't need to put Smithtown up for sale," despite what he described as official scaremongering that "unless we allow mega-developments like Gyrodyne and thousands of overpriced apartment units we won't have a stable tax base."

The pandemic’s effect on town finances has not been as severe as town officials once feared, comptroller Paul Rubano said. But it was a factor in the town’s decision to increase the waste fee, said Mike Engelmann, solid waste coordinator. "We saw an increase of up to 20% by volume of curbside garbage" as many residents switched to working from home and began home or yard improvement projects, Engelmann said.

"Vegetative events" like Tropical Storm Isaias in August 2020 are also escalating disposal costs, yielding large amounts of brush and tree stumps, which are expensive to process. And, he said, the hundreds of tons of recyclables carted away from Smithtown curbs each week fetch less than they once did at market, depriving the town of offsetting revenue.

Rubano said cuts imposed last year on discretionary spending in areas like repairs and office supplieshave been lifted. An uptick in mortgage recording tax revenue that began last year when New York City residents bought homes in the town also appears ready to subside, he said.

Councilman Tom Lohmann, the board’s liaison for Parks and Public Safety Departments, said the draft budget would fund security cameras for recently improved town parks along with software for automatic monitoring at Public Safety headquarters. "If facilities are closed, it will alert us if people are walking there. We’re ahead of the curve."

Payroll for full-time employees would increase from $34.2 million to $35.9 million, including a handful of new hires in the Public Safety Department.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.