THE RECORDER
Amsterdam, NY
April 6, 2004

Regulating district unveils new budget

By CRAIG CLARK

Recorder News Staff

UTICA - The proposal to increase permit fees on the Great Sacandaga Lake has been shelved for some time now and regulators on the reservoir are turning elsewhere to fill budget holes for 2004.

For the coming year, reservoir officials could seek a 28 percent increase from the reservoir's downstream beneficiaries in order to balance the 2004 budget.

According to a tentative 2004-05 spending plan unveiled by the staff of the Hudson River-Black River Regulat-ing District Monday, municipalities and businesses in Saratoga, Albany, Rensselaer and other counties would assume about half the costs the district last year unsuccessfully proposed to place on Great Sacandaga permit holders.

In the tentative budget, the district's downstream beneficiaries, which include Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., the city of Albany and about a dozen others, would be charged an extra $800,000, bringing their collective annual assessment to $3,579,777.

For 2003, when the regulating district faced a large budget hole, it turned to permit holders on the Great Sacandaga Lake, raising the annual price of access permits to generate an additional $1.6 million a year.

That idea didn't go over well with users of the Sacandaga and the regulating board was forced to abandon it, due in part to public pressure and also to the mandates of the Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform. The three-year spending plan the board adopted last year had to be scrapped, bringing the district to this second go-around of 2004-05 budget proceedings.

Last year when the plans to raise access permit fees became widely known, the district cited rising health insurance costs and rising taxes as reasons for needing more money. It also cited legal fees associated with a long-standing court battle with some downstream beneficiaries who are fighting the level of payments they're making to the district. Those same beneficiaries, according to current formulas, would see increases for 2004 if the tentative budget passes without change.

The 2004-05 draft budget also calls for around $428,500 worth of cuts in expenditures, a decrease of 7.7 percent.

The Hudson River area of the district's tentative budget has expenditures totaling around $5.1 million.

According to the regulating district's executive director, Richard H. Lefebvre, there are no layoffs slated.

"I think it's been a very good faith effort to get as close to bare bones as possible," Lefebvre said.

In the tentative plan, district staff is also calling for the use of $200,000 from an assessment stabilization reserve fund to help balance the budget next year. That would leave the fund with a balance of around $160,000, district officials say.

The tentative budget also calls for the district to sock away $65,000 to begin building legal, engineering and tax reserve funds.

Since abandoning the plan to raise access permit fees on the Great Sacandaga, the district has, according to a year-to-date analysis, picked up an operating loss of $240,537.

With about three months remaining in the fiscal year and with expenses anticipated at around $200,000 a month, the district's total loss for 2003-04 is expected to be around $900,000. While the loss can be covered this year, the regulating board's treasurer/secretary George Scaringe said, the district currently has no means of recouping the funds.

"We can't continue like this," Scaringe said Monday. He said extra revenue will have to be realized from somewhere.

"The board has to start to begin to look at additional beneficiaries as reported in Gomez and Sullivan," Scaringe said.

Released this summer, the report by Gomez and Sullivan, an engineering and environmental science consulting firm, identifies several possible candidates around the Great Sacandaga Lake that the district could begin charging for the benefits they receive from the reservoir.

Among the main candidates are property owners who benefit from the lake by way of increased property values and the downstream waste water treatment plants.

Board members Monday did not discuss the tentative budget.

The board is expected to review the document in detail next month at its meeting in Fulton County.

DAILY GAZETTE
April 7, 2004

FULTON COUNTY EDITION

Sacandaga Lake managers offer 2004-05 budget

By JOE MAHER Gazette Reporter

UTICA — The Hudson River Black River Regulating District, which manages the Great Sacandaga Lake in Fulton and Saratoga counties, has released a preliminary budget for fiscal year 2004-05.

Secretary-Treasurer George Scaringe presented the $5.1 million plan to the members of the regulating district board at a meeting in Utica Monday.

Great Sacandaga Lake access permit holders will contribute about $423,000 to the budget, which is about the same as the current budget, Scaringe said.

Downstream beneficiaries, who pay the district to operate the lake as a flood-control tool, will contribute 28 percent more this year than last year, Scaringe said.

Beneficiaries are assessed at $3.5 million, he said.

"The board has it for a month to look it over [and] start asking questions," he said.

"There will be a formal presentation of the budget at our May 10 meeting. We'll see if there's any tweaking to be done, see what input the board has," he said.

The budget will be up for adoption in June and will run through June 30, 2005.

District Executive Director Dick Lefebvre said the May meeting will feature a work session and the board will review the budget line by line.

Also Monday, Lefebvre said:

Board members approved the adoption of a committee system. Lefebvre said the system will allow board members to develop degrees of expertise on various topics.

The state has requested the district to have a governance plan in place by May 14. Lefebvre said the plan is being drafted and the board will conduct a work session on that in May also.

He said the goal is to "increase predictability and transparency of public authorities."

The district continues to work on drafting a request for proposals for the independent audit of the permit system on Great Sacandaga Lake.

"I think we have that pretty well set. We'll be advertising that and looking to secure an auditing firm," he said.

LEADER-HERALD
Gloversville, NY
April 10, 2004

Lake district budget pitched

By SCOTT DONNELLY, The Leader-Herald

MAYFIELD - The Hudson River-Black River Regulating District has released what officials are calling a "bare-bones" budget for the 2004-05 fiscal year.

"The intent was to take a very hard look at every line," said Richard Lefebvre, executive director of the regulating district. "I think we are at what one might characterize as bare-bones."

The balanced budget is for $5,128,277. It includes the elimination of certain contingency funds, a tightening of salary allotments and a static permit fee structure as promised by district officials after a previous budget was withdrawn amid public outcry.

Expected income from permit fees for the 2004-05 fiscal year will be $423,000, a considerable difference from the $2 million the district expected to raise based on the budget it withdrew last year. The district had proposed raising access permit fees by as much as 1,000 percent in some cases.

The move prompted an organized movement against the district, which ended with a change in district leadership and scrapping of the permit fee increase proposal.

Access permits are purchased annually by residents living around the Great Sacandaga Lake. The permits allow those residents exclusive use of the district-owned shore line in front of their property.

"Now, [the budget has been] presented to the board for the board to look at and to opine on it," Lefebvre said. "Should there be additional cuts recommended by the board, they will be executed. These numbers reflect considerable cutting."

The revised budget includes a 6 percent decrease in "personal services and employee benefits," compared with last year's figures. The previous figure called for spending $949,000 on such benefits, but the newly-proposed budget has pared that down to $891,000.

There was also a 66.7 percent drop in the allotment for "capital expenditures" in the new budget. That figure fell from $45,000 in the 2003-04 budget to just $6,000 in the 2004-05 budget.

Another notable cut came in the category of salaries for permanent employees.

That figure fell from $467,000 in the 2003-04 budget to $451,340 in the budget being considered for the current fiscal year. It was unclear Friday whether that 6 percent drop represented a loss of jobs at the district, however.

More details will be released after the board discusses the proposed budget at its next regular meeting, to take place at 9 a.m. May 10 at the Johnstown Loyal Order of the Moose Lodge on Comrie Avenue.

The board, according to a budget process plan it adopted at its March meeting, would then vote on the proposed budget at its June meeting.

"We've worked hard on that budget," said George Scaringe, the district's secretary-treasurer. "We looked through it area by area. It was a good dialogue, and hopefully there won't be any surprises [between now and the budget's adoption]."