$80.1M budget passed for Southampton Town

Southampton passed a budget Friday that was little different from the one submitted by the town supervisor last month and stays within the mandated tax levy cap of 2 percent.

The $80.1 million budget will have a tax levy of $63.8 million, a 1.2 percent increase. All but a small portion of that will be for special districts in town that raise their own taxes and usually affect only a portion of residents, but must be included in the town’s levy costs.

About $578,000 is specifically for three newly formed erosion districts along the water, where residents agreed to tax themselves in order to shore up sand along their homes. Without those erosion districts, which make up almost all of the increase, as well as smaller increases in fire protection and water districts, the levy would be about $16,000 lower than the 2011 budget.

A house with a median home value of $600,000 in the village will see a reduction of $24 a year, while a home outside the village would see an $18 increase due to services needed outside village boundaries, such as police and garbage, according to town Comptroller Tamara Wright.

After a month of wrangling, a series of amendments to the budgets were passed last week that didn’t change the financials that much, but changed where the money would be spent. For instance, an amendment restored two police civilian positions — traffic control officers — from the superintendent’s original proposed budget and put back some higher-ranking officers while cutting others.