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Menands board questions raises, overtime and coding in 2026 draft budget
Summary
Board members pressed staff on line-item coding (grant writer, grant-reimbursable expense, postage), questioned raises for noncontract employees, and asked for payroll/overtime and insurance recoding; staff agreed to recode items and return with a revised draft for the public hearing window.
At a budget workshop, Menands Village trustees scrutinized multiple line items of the draft 2026 budget and asked staff to correct coding, provide documentation, and reallocate expenses where appropriate.
Members asked staff to fix the consultant account that lists a "grant writer" without a clear chart-of-accounts description and to separate grant-reimbursable expenses from broad "miscellaneous" building charges so reimbursable purchases (for example, cameras) appear net of grant income. Staff reported the grant writer has mainly billed fire-related work this year and that the total village allocation should be clarified (the draft showed $10,000 in one line and $15,000 in another; staff said the agreed total was $25,000).
Personnel costs drew repeated attention. Several trustees said this year is not appropriate for raises for noncontract employees; board members flagged several unusually high proposed raises (two instances around 12–13 percent for event staff/historian) and asked staff to hold raises that are not contractually mandated. The board also discussed equalizing stipends for the events coordinator, historian and senior coordinator and shifting the summer youth responsibilities from a separate youth director to the events coordinator.
Police, street maintenance and public-works lines were examined for overtime and vehicle spending. Staff said a change in ACUData payroll coding had affected overtime calculations and committed to review payroll records to ensure water breaks, emergency work, and snow overtime are allocated to the correct fund or line. The board likewise asked for a breakdown of vehicle maintenance allocations by the specific vehicles used for water, sewer or DPW tasks so charges are split appropriately.
Trustees questioned a proposed large increase in newsletter postage and printing, noting that actual postage this year was roughly $2,600; staff said some Visa charges had been miscoded and agreed to reassign postage and printing to the appropriate fund accounts. The board also asked staff to verify municipal association dues and insurance allocations, and to check whether some items long labeled "unallocated" in the village accounts are OSC (Office of the State Comptroller) terms that should be renamed for clarity.
Staff agreed to produce a revised budget draft that recodes the questioned lines, provides supporting invoices and calculations for overtime and insurance projections, and clarifies stipend/personal-service allocations ahead of the April public hearing window.
