Disagreement over the number of town clerks and proposed pay raises — along with a heated budget workshop meeting — made for a complicated budget process in Ellery this year.

Town Clerk Rebecca Haines and Supervisor Larry Anderson both hoped for a “smooth” year to pass a 2023 budget. For the first time in years, Haines said the town held publicized budget workshop meetings to ensure the public could take part.

Haines worked with Anderson on a tentative 2023 budget, which was presented to the Ellery Town Board. At that meeting, a second session was scheduled for the preliminary budget’s anticipated approval.

However, passing the 2023 spending plan became problematic. Part of the problem is that the Town Board already had been shorthanded due to an open seat on the board since April. Another board member then resigned in November.

Present at the second meeting to discuss the budget were the town supervisor and two Town Board members, John Cresanti Sr. and Mark Schlemmer.

Haines said that meeting quickly became a disaster.

“We got to page two and there was absolutely no agreement on anything, and there wasn’t going to be any agreement on anything,” she said.

Cresanti explained that part of the disagreement centered around the size of the staff for the town clerk’s office. In anticipation of Haines’ retirement, the town currently has two “highly qualified” deputy clerks, with the plan for them to take on the responsibilities once she leaves.

However, not everyone agrees with the plan.

Anderson said Schlemmer has opposed using three people to fulfill the current clerk position.

“Mark refused,” Anderson said. “He said he is absolutely not going to fund this office with three people. With that, he got up and walked out of our board meeting, and basically we haven’t heard anything after that. This was a disaster for me. When this walk out happened and there was an absolute refusal to compromise with anybody, it was like, ‘OK, what we do now?'”

Schlemmer told The Post-Journal that he walked out of the meeting because it became a “destructive” situation and nothing “constructive” was going to be achieved.

“It really wasn’t a workshop,” he said. “It became more or less like a harassment session, and I got to the point where I was being verbally harassed and intimidated by certain individuals that were in attendance, not by the board itself.”

Schlemmer said while the meeting was open to the public, negotiations on the budget are not typically open for public comment. He said the work session on the budget is supposed to be a negotiation process between the supervisor and the Town Board.

“It became an open floor session to the point where then certain individuals started to verbally intimidate me and it became kind of a yelling match to the point where I couldn’t talk,” he said. “I just said I’m not going to be subjected to this type of harassment and yelling. I got up and I left. On my way out, the supervisor had some words for me, too, so I gave it back to him and then continued to proceed out the door.”

Without enough board members present, no additional changes could be made to the budget.

“There was not enough people to vote on it,” Cresanti said. “That is the tentative budget that we have.”

Haines explained the town’s budget has already been submitted to the county. Due to town law, without a quorum at a Town Board meeting, the town is forced to officially adopt the tentative budget, rather than a budget agreed upon by the board.

PAY RAISES QUESTIONED

Questions also have been raised regarding salary increases for town employees in the 2023 budget. Haines explained the budget was given careful consideration with regard to adequately compensating town employees for their work.

“I’ve always prided myself on being totally aboveboard,” she said. “I would never do anything with a town budget that I couldn’t justify for the simple fact that this is public money. That’s been entrusted to us for as long as we’ve been elected. I wouldn’t ever do anything inappropriate.”

The town supervisor’s salary will increase from $11,000 annually to $19,000 in 2023. Schlemmer claims the salary bump will make Anderson the “highest paid supervisor” in Chautauqua County.

Haines noted that Anderson is planning on doing something different than the previous town supervisor. She said he will be present in the town office during daytime working hours — putting in about 20 hours per week.

“It’s like 18 bucks an hour,” Anderson said. “The salary I’m on right now is $11,000, which works out to about $10 an hour.”

Since the tentative budget prepared by the town has been submitted to the county, Haines said the budget is now adopted as an operating budget, which can be modified throughout the year. For adjustments to be made to the operating budget, the board will be required to approve a motion to change the budget.

“Basically, it’s a road map,” she said. “These should be working documents. You should be able to modify if you need to.”

Haines acknowledged that adjustments will most likely have to be made to account for rising costs next year. For example, due to the town’s trucks relying on diesel fuel, Cresanti said he anticipates that budget amendments will be necessary to account for rising fuel costs.

In addition to the expectation of amendments to the 2023 budget, Haines said the town’s youth recreational program was not included in the budget.

“Unfortunately, one thing that did fall out of the budget, because we did not have a preliminary budget, this makes me sad, but we will not be having a youth recreational program this coming year,” Haines said. “I think after this year, unfortunately, it probably will just be gone, but we had tried to put it into the preliminary budget. There are consequences of people walking out of meetings. I’ve never seen anything like it, I really haven’t.”

IN NEED OF A ‘COMPLETE COUNCIL’

Anderson hopes to appoint an additional council member at January’s Town Board meeting. He stressed the importance of having a “complete council,” but said it is difficult to find people who are willing to serve on the board.

Cresanti echoed Anderson’s comments, sharing the difficulty of finding new board members. While Town Board members will receive a 25% pay increase in 2023, board members will only receive $3,500 per year as compensation for their time and effort.

Cresanti said people do not join the Town Board for the money, but rather the opportunity to serve the community.

Ellery’s budget for 2023 will increase 2 cents per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value, which matches the increase from last year, Haines said.

“Whenever we talk about our finances, we’re very conservative,” Haines said. “We’ve always been very conservative. We always remember that it’s public money.”

Schlemmer offered a different perspective. He said while the tax increase was only 2 cents per $1,000, a large portion of the town’s fund balance was used to “offset” the high increases in the town’s budget. Schlemmer said the allocation from the fund balance was about $270,000 for the 2023 budget, which is significantly higher than the past couple of years.

“The last two years, somewhere around $70,000 to $80,000 was used, and then the 2023 budget is $270,000, so it’s a huge increase,” he said. “People see a small tax increase and think the budget is sound, but in actuality a lot of fund balance could have been used. In this particular instance, for this year in the town of Ellery’s 2023 budget, quite a bit was used. To me that was done to just kind of hide the huge increases in expenditures. ”

Town officials also acknowledged that the budget allocates more money to the town Highway Department than in a typical year due to multiple vehicles needing to be replaced next year.

Haines said more than $100,000 has been budgeted for the purchase of new equipment to replace aging and depreciating equipment for the town. She explained that every year, the largest portion of the budget is allocated toward the highway department.

“I’ve always said that, as a board, we have two responsibilities,” Cresanti said. “The first one is to take care of the taxpayers’ dollars and the second is to take care of the employees that work for the town of Ellery we have. We have highway department, we have this office that has to be staffed and people have to be compensated for their time.”

Looking ahead to next year, Cresanti said he hopes to have all of the Town Board members present to be able to make the necessary adjustments to the budget, rather than getting “stuck” with the tentative budget like this year.

Schlemmer said he is fully committed to serving the residents of Ellery and will continue to be dedicated as a Town Board member.

“I have no intention of leaving,” he said.