Mayor's corner
4/2/2026
Mayor’s corner by Greg “Porp” Rogers:
With our budget workshops complete, the Board is going to propose an increase of 80 cent per thousand to the tax rate. We are aware this is a drastic increase of 10% and have closely evaluated the need for such increase. The contributing factor is, for the past 5 years we have taken out of Reserves to not raise the rate (roughly 250K per year). When the assessments went up 25%, the Board felt the need to cut the rate by $2.70. The way the system is intended to work was that your spending should not change, and the added assessment would result in a lower rate. When lowering the rate, the Board was too aggressive, and we once again used a fund balance. Health care has become a huge factor as it has doubled since 2018. Overall inflation touches every aspect of our budget, much like it does with your home budget. We have scrutinized our spending on everything; insurance, internet provider, phone lines, and personnel. The police department has lost three officers that we plan on replacing with part time people, and retirement for police departments equals 1/3 of a million dollar budget. Our total expenditures are 4.7 million dollars. The Village has 5+ million in unrestricted fund balance, and the goal is to keep this amount equal to the annual expenditures while keeping a consistent tax rate as you have experienced since 2011, with a total fluctuation of 45 cents over a 12 year period. By doing this we will be able to keep our A+ credit rating and our fiscal stress level of zero (highest you can have). These moves at this time are being done to help future boards and put them in a position to grow LeRoy. We also continuously compare ourselves against other communities to see how we stack up.
Our end goal was to be able to dissolve the Village and consolidate with the Town to save money by taking advantage of incentives offered by the State, and efficiency from eliminating a duplicate of services. This is not going to happen as both boards interviewed two companies who assist with the grants and study, and the Town has no interest in this plan at this time.
The Village board meeting will be on April 13th at 6:00 pm at the Village Hall for our yearly Organizational Meeting, this will not be the budget meeting. The Budget meeting will be on April 15, at 7:00PM at the Village Hall. This meeting is open to the public.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is also big enough to take everything you have.” Thomas Jefferson