Chautauqua County Legislature meeting (October 25, 2023)
The Chautauqua County Legislature has approved the 2024 County Budget with its largest tax decrease in 41 years.
The $290,839,312 budget includes an 89-cent tax rate decrease.
Democrats in the Legislature attempted to amend the budget twice to use $1 million of the fund balance to further reduce the tax levy and to eliminate the Media Information Officer from the County Executive’s budget. Both proposals failed along party lines.
Legislature Chairman Pierre Chagnon said the committee budget review process did find some issues that needed to be corrected, “And I think that the committees did a fine job in proposing recommendations to bring the budget back in line with the tax rate reduction that was proposed in the tentative budget, and keeping the budget under the tax cap, and dealing with the additional expenses that did come to light.”
The county was notified of some increases after the proposed budget was released including a $644,000 increase in Medicaid expenses and $975,000 adjustment in retirement by New York State.
Other increases requiring the use of additional fund balance included a $750,000 increase in Safety Net expenses and $250,000 increase in Mental Hygiene Site Evaluations. A total of $4.6 million was drawn down from the $37.7 million fund balance to cover additional costs.
The budget passed along party lines with a vote of 15 to 4.
Leave a Reply