Farmingdale adopts $5.62M budget

Farmingdale officials have adopted a $5.62 million budget for 2012-13 that does not exceed the state-mandated property tax cap.

The budget was approved Monday night with a unanimous 5-0 board of trustees vote, Mayor Ralph Ekstrand said.

“We did everything we promised in that we were under the tax cap,” he said Tuesday.

Ekstrand said village officials went above and beyond in “cutting everything to keep it [the budget] down.”

The spending plan is a 2.24 percent increase over the current fiscal year.

It sets a property tax levy of $3.56 million, which is a 0.73 percent jump over the current year. The tax rate for the fiscal year beginning June 1 is $3.27 per $1,000 of residential assessed valuation and $6.02 per $1,000 of commercial assessed valuation.

The property tax levy is a $16,000 “scooch, if you will” under what Albany mandated as a limit on Farmingdale, Ekstrand said.

The village was among the few in Oyster Bay Town that did not pass a local law granting the authority to override Albany’s levy limit.

Massapequa Park also adopted its 2012-13 budget on Monday.

The $6.16 million spending plan for Massapequa Park was approved by a 4-0 board of trustees vote, with one member absent. The budget is 0.13 percent less than that for the current fiscal year.

The village also did not exceed the state’s tax cap, though its officials had voted for the option to do so as a safety precaution.