Southampton OKs 2011 budget; Riverhead doesn't vote

Southampton officials approved their 2011 town budget Friday while in Riverhead - despite a heated meeting and an attempt to trim more than $100,000 from Supervisor Sean Walter's spending plan - no budget vote took place at all.

In Southampton, in a series of 3-2 party-line votes, Republican board members reversed efforts by Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst in her budget proposal to consolidate the town's administrative structure. The board also spread out the town's chain of command and brought back the office of general services, which had been virtually eliminated by Throne-Holst, a Democrat.

Bridget Fleming, a Democratic board member, objected that many of the changes were only made public the day before the vote. But Republican Councilman James Malone said that Republicans had been talking about their ideas for weeks. "There is nothing personal in this. It's a philosophical difference," he said.

The board ended up adopting the amended budget, which Thorne-Holst said cut residents' tax rate by 0.83 percent.

Meanwhile in Riverhead, during a special board meeting called by Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, the board voted to make a $15,000 cut in street lighting and a $12-million reduction in garbage collection expenses, but she and fellow Republican George Gabrielsen failed to get a third vote for another $113,800 in additional spending reductions.

The board didn't approve the $44-million spending plan Friday. It now automatically goes into effect.

Town budgets were passed with much less debate Thursday night in East Hampton and Southold.

In East Hampton, where Supervisor Bill Wilkinson inherited a $30-million debt from a previous administration and vowed to cut back on both town spending and town services, Wilkinson's proposed budget was unanimously approved.

The $64-million East Hampton budget for 2011 trims spending by $8 million and cuts taxes by 17 percent. The board added only about $80,000 to the budget in the form of several grants, such as an additional $5,000 to a food pantry, $5,000 to an early child care program and $5,000 to allow a senior center to partner with Southampton Hospital on a wellness program.

In Southold on Thursday, the town board made only one change when it adopted Supervisor Scott Russell's proposed budget. It took $35,000 that had been earmarked for raises for elected officials and zoning and planning board members and instead used it to buy trash cans to put at the ends of roads where litter now accumulates.

Earlier in the week, the Shelter Island town board adopted its town budget, making virtually no changes in Supervisor James Dougherty's proposal. It was almost identical to this year's $10.2-million budget and raised the tax rate by just over 2 percent.