AUBURN - Cayuga County Manager Wayne Allen released a tentative 2009 county budget proposal Thursday afternoon that would raise the overall tax levy by 4.5 percent.

The increased tax levy comes even as the county raised expenditures by a minimum, he said. The proposed total expenditures for 2009 are $139,122,767, up $1,107,054 from last year's $138,015,713. This is an increase of less than 1 percent.

“That's pretty remarkable right there and in this day and age, I have to give (credit to) department heads who understand the message that was given out that they needed to be fiscally prudent and justify what they were doing and hold the line and all costs ... they achieved that goal,” Allen said.

The downside is that the county is losing revenues, he said. The 2008 total revenue, which excludes real property taxes, is $103,023,444. The total projected revenue for 2009 is $101,612,834, or a difference of $1,410,610, which equals to 1.14 percent.

If you add those two numbers, the total expenditures and the loss of revenue, that is the projected tax increase, Allen said.

“One of the things that the Legislature just passed was taking unappropriated fund balance of almost $1.5 million to match federal dollars for the nursing home,” he said. “If we did not do that, one, we would lose the ability to draw down on federal dollars, and two, because we did that, we are not raising property taxes to subsidize the operation of the nursing home in 2009 and 2010.”

If, in the original budget request the county did not have this additional money, the county would have had to increase property taxes by almost $1 million to help pay for the nursing home, Allen said.

The tentative tax levy for 2009 is $33,490,990, up $1,447,134 from 2008.

The tax levy for 2008 was $32,043,856, with the tentative increase of 4.52 percent. The tentative tax levy for the 2008 budget was 5.8 percent, Allen said. The approved 2008 budget carried a 1.4 percent tax levy.

Allen explained that some reasons for the loss of revenue in the 2009 budget are a loss of sales tax revenue, a loss of interest from the fund balance and cuts in state and federal aid.

The 2009 projected budget has $500,000 less in sales tax revenue than the 2008 budget.

“We're seeing a downward trend of sales tax revenue and that's part of the recession, part of the fiscal state of New York state government and business,” Allen said.

Also, because of declining interest rates, the county will lose approximately $260,000 in interest dollars from its fund balance or any other cash the county has invested.

“The interest rates have dropped and we projected that we were going to get $260,000 more than we (actually) did,” he said. “That's why we have this loss of $1.4 million of revenue. It was sales tax, interest income and cuts in state and federal aid.”

Two key dates to keep in mind are Nov. 18 and Dec. 16, Allen said. The New York state Legislature will meet to address the budget gap of $2 billion in November. This will have an impact on the 2009 and 2010 budgets, he said.

On the second date, Gov. David Paterson will release his tentative budget for 2009-10 in December, which has a projected $12.5 billion deficit. Next year's state budget is being released 30 days prior to previous budgets, Allen said.

The proposed county budget includes $225,000 for an economic development contract.

The county will bond no more than $7 million for its mental health project, which includes building a new Mental Health Center.

Allen also recommended that three new positions be created, a county auditor position with a salary of $60,000, a principal accounting clerk for the highway department with a salary of $33,353 and a quality assurance specialist for the county department of mental health, with a salary of $60,000.

The Ways and Means Committee has 15 days from yesterday to review the budget and make changes. After, the committee will issue a legislative report. The county manager's office will help with that task.

Once the report is issued, a public hearing will be held and the Legislature has until Dec. 20 to adopt the budget. Whatever is in place will become the final budget on Dec. 21.

“It's a comfortable budget under the current circumstances. I'm not uncomfortable with putting it out there,” said Legislator Francis Mitchell, R-Genoa, who spent a lot of hours working on the budget.

“I think there will be changes,” Mitchell said. “Events are moving along and none of them are very good events so I think we need to do a lot of talking, I think Ways and Means is going to have a lot to do, a lot on its plate.”

Staff Writer Gitana Mirochnik can be reached at 253-5311 or gitana.mirochnik@lee.net