Tough Times, Tougher Choices
We all knew impending statewide revenue shortfalls would hit us locally and soon. At this moment the Onteora Central School District is struggling to assess the first announced round of cuts in proposed state aid. Initial numbers indicate an immediate reduction of over 6 percent, meaning a dollar cut in state aid of between $500 and $600 for every student in the district. And that’s not for next year, it’s for this year. The only way to cover that difference is by cutting costs or services we’ve already committed to, or by raising local property taxes.
What’s worse is it looks like this is just be the tip of the iceberg. New York State’s projected budget deficit for this year and next is still an astronomical $14 billion plus, and the sum total of cuts proposed, $5.2 billion to date, takes at best just a piece of it out. So what’s to come, we don’t know, but based on what Governor Paterson’s saying, we’re damn anxious. It’s not as if the $836 million cut from local school districts is the only area that’s being impacted. Already slated for cuts are funding for home healthcare and nursing homes, mental health, and municipal aid for a range of programs from economic development to senior and youth programs. More spending cuts no doubt, are coming.
When state government is forced to cut its program funding, two things happen. Some services disappear or are available to fewer people, typically with deeply negative impacts on society’s safety net. For other things it’s the funding burden that shifts…t o counties, cities, and towns. The Governor, to his credit, has promised not to transfer the tax burden down to the county level. But it’s hard to see that he’ll actually succeed when for instance almost $500,000 in operating funds are being cut from Ulster County’s Golden Hill Health Care Center, and UCCC’s base state aid is dropping by 10% while tuition there will be rising by at least $600 and maybe more.
Given this kind of real-time economic climate change, prioritizing how to spend what’s left from the shrinking revenue pool is going to get increasingly agonizing at every level of government from our state capital down to every county seat and every city and town hall. And in every case it’s just us the taxpayers who ultimately are the funder of last resort. Our towns, our county, the state, it’s all just us.
In the midst of all this, there’s one local state expenditure pending that remains uncertain and in light of the state’s budget problem it’s a very big one: $50-$70 million for the taxpayer-funded portion of a substantially private hotel and real estate development project proposed for Belleayre Mountain. It’s a project that remains in the midst of its environmental review, and which should be moving forward again with its developer’s anticipated submission of a supplemental EIS sometime in 2009.
We believe in the importance of public infrastructure and creative economic development initiatives. For eight years we’ve supported and called for additional State funding for improvements to the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center. At this time however, we’re at a loss as to how to even assess the economic viability of the project as reflected in former Governor Spitzer’s 2007 Agreement in Principal with the project’s developer and others. Whether the private portion of such a project is even fundable in our current economic situation, is, we think, questionable. Finding half-a-billion cash dollars for anything at this time is more improbable than it used to be (Hey, even T. Boone Pickens is cutting his projects in half because of lack of credit). And with the taxpayer-funded Ski Center investment essentially serving as the larger project’s seed capital, it’s looking to us like increasingly risky business for everyone involved. In contrast, the modest state funding similarly earmarked for a long-overdue Catskill Interpretive Center in Mt. Tremper appears as wise and timely as it has been from its inception long ago. That’s one of very few easy choices and we’d love to see DEC move it forward.
Hang in there folks, enjoy Thanksgiving and your loved ones. Winter’s just around the corner so let’s all settle in as best we all can. BP