Elmsford trustees review proposed 2025–26 budget revisions, school and sanitation fee increases

The Elmsford Board of Trustees convened a work session April 21, 2025, to continue discussion of the village’s 2025–26 budget and consider several modifications, including proposed increases to sanitation fees and the per-building fee charged to local schools.

The discussion centered on correcting the salary schedule, updating revenue estimates tied to an investment arrangement, and specific fee changes that would affect schools and sanitation customers. Finance staff framed the revisions as bookkeeping corrections and program-driven adjustments rather than new policy initiatives.

Finance staff told trustees, “You can see the actual for the 2324 is $2.63. That's the large jump from where we've been going back to that year. And what that had to do with is, I think I mentioned a little bit previously, a program that we set up with Orange Bank that was similar to a state line investment company that was doing things for municipalities and larger. You can put little sums of money in, but you don't get as much interest. And we got our bank to basically mirror what they were doing with our balances.” The staff member said the change in approach increased interest receipts: “And our interest went from $50 a year to $200 a year.”

On fees, staff highlighted a proposed change to charges assessed to schools. The current fee for schools is $410 per building; staff proposed increasing that fee to $600 per building. Trustees also discussed raising sanitation fees, which staff said “hasn't been increased in many years,” but the specific new sanitation rate was not specified in the discussion.

Trustees reviewed a set of salary-schedule corrections and related personnel-service adjustments. The changes discussed included moving line-item amounts in personnel services (examples given: board budget from 28 to 34; executive from 125 to 137.5) and adding $25,000 to part-time personnel services to cover two summer positions intended for street work. To offset those changes, staff proposed increasing the interest-on-investments revenue line from 25 to $43,500, which staff said would make the net budget impact roughly neutral.

The presiding officer opened the meeting by calling the session to order and stating the agenda focus: “Good evening. I'm going to call to order the board of trustees work session for 04/21/2025. We're gonna continue on the 2526 standard of budget.” No formal motions or votes were recorded on the revisions during the portion of the meeting captured in the transcript. Staff indicated the numerical corrections would be incorporated into the draft budget for later formal action.

Trustees and staff did not reach final decisions on the sanitation rate in the excerpted discussion; the school fee increase, salary-schedule corrections, and the revised interest estimate were described as items to be modified in the draft budget. The board did not take a formal vote in the provided transcript segment.

Next steps noted in the discussion: staff will incorporate the corrections and proposed adjustments into the budget document for future review and formal consideration; timing for any public hearing or vote was not specified in the transcript.