No Vote on Tuesday on 2011 Budget

The Riverhead Town Board, which was expected to vote at Tuesday's 7:00 p.m. town board meeting on a budget for 2011, decided late Tuesday afternoon to take it off the agenda.

According to Tara McLaughlin, Supervisor Sean Walter's executive assistant and chief of staff, there remain too many issues up in the air to have the vote.  She also said that a special Town Board meeting for later in the week to vote on the budget has not yet been scheduled.

Such a vote, however, isn't required. By state law, the town must adopt a final budget by Nov. 20, which this year falls on a Saturday. However the Town Board can opt to take no vote at all, in which case the tentative budget Walter presented in September would by default become the budget for 2011.

At least two board members, Councilwoman Jodi Giglio and Councilman George Gabrielsen, have already said they would not vote for Walter's original budget, which called for a 4.36 percent increase in town-wide taxes.

Gabrielsen said this afternoon that cuts he and Giglio had proposed would result in getting the tax rise down to 3.92 percent. But now, he said, there were questions concerning certain anticipated town revenues that need to be resolved.

Meanwhile, Councilman Jim Wooten said this afternoon that he would never vote for some of the cuts that Giglio and Gabrielsen have proposed. "They're shortsighted," he said Tuesday. "I told them, 'you guys are new at this and you're putting a budget forth that's not responsible.'"

Wooten said that if some of the budget cuts proposed were to be adopted, "the town would run out of money by next October and would have to dip into reserves."

Town-wide taxes are defined as the three categories of taxes that all homeowners are assessed no matter where they live. They include taxes to support the town's general budget, the highway department and the lighting district.