Bedford's Age of Austerity: Contracts Under Town Board Microscope

Bedford’s finances, which so dominated town officials’ attention in 2010, remained a preoccupation Tuesday, with even nickel-and-dime contract renewals getting the scrutiny once reserved for megadollar expenditures.

In the end, virtually all of the contracts—routine renewals of such services as computer maintenance, animal control and visiting nurses—were approved. But the town board had served clear notice that at least for the foreseeable future business will be anything but usual. Indeed, even assents came amid grumbling that some service providers do not fully grasp the severity of Bedford’s fiscal squeeze and could find their contracts being "shopped around," as Deputy Mayor Peter Chryssos put it—more than once.

Everyone doing business with the town had been asked to “do better” in their 2011 rates, much as town departments were required cut back this year’s funding requests. Disappointed in some of what they found, town board members took turns examining both the rates vendors charge and the services they provide.

As an Age of Austerity took firmer root in town hall, the board Tuesday also:

• Cut a nickel from the money paid for each mile driven on town business in personal automobiles, citing IRS calculations to drop reimbursement from 55 cents to 50 cents.
• Increased, but modestly, most fees for groups using town park facilities and set fees for renting space in the Bedford Hills Community House, including $420 for six hours’ use of the main auditorium, $55 for the room below the auditorium and $35 for the board room or lounge.

Board rejects boilerplate resolution opposing property tax cap

After reviewing the "boilerplate” language of a proposed Association of Towns resolution opposing proposed state-mandated caps on property taxes, the town board decided to craft its own message for Albany.

Newly installed Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a cap on annual increases in local property taxes one of the cornerstones of his tough talk about solving the state's fiscal woes and providing relief to tax-weary New Yorkers. The proposal favored by Cuomo would limit increases to 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower, and provide few exemptions for municipalities and school districts to maneuver around the cap.

New York has the highest property taxes in the nation, and the burden borne by Westchester residents is the highest in the state. In 2009, the median property tax bill for county homeowners was $8,422 - close to 8 percent of the average homeowner's income, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group.

Proponents of the cap say the measure would provide residents with peace of mind and stem the slow but steady exodus of wealthy homeowners to more tax-friendly locales. But even as the cap—once the province of conservative Republicans—gains momentum in Albany, Bedford vows to fight it, joining an array of interest groups that have sounded alarms about the potential implications of limiting the amount of money that cities, towns and school districts can drum up from their residents.

The town board rejected, however, a proposed fill-in-the-blanks resolution. Distributed by the Association of Towns and designed to be sent to Albany as evidence of local resistance to a property-tax cap, it was shelved amid growing expressions of heated opposition by board members. Branding the association’s text “boilerplate,” Councilman Francis Corcoran offered to draft a resolution the board could consider at its next meeting, Jan. 18.

It was already clear, however, how board members viewed the proposed cap. Noting the realities of today’s sour economy, Councilman David Gabrielson said the board had “really risen to this calamity. We have worked really hard to maintain the services that we feel the residents of the Town of Bedford need and want. We’ve cut things where we’ve been able to cut—and we’ve made a lot of cuts.”

Chryssos flatly dismissed the tax-cap proposal, saying, “This is a shell game; this is fantasy.” While acknowledging that Cuomo was new to the governor’s chair, he asked, “Why would you ever put more control of finances in the hands of a state?” He said Albany lawmakers had “driven this state off a cliff—and I don’t even think we’re at the worst point yet.”

Gabrielson maintained that any local spending excesses were just as easily cured at the local level. “If we’re not doing a good job [of balancing services and taxes],” he said, “the people of Bedford can vote us out and put in people who can do a better job.”

Routine contracts get are scrutinized

Perhaps nothing better illustrates Bedford’s new Age of Austerity than the town board’s contemplation of two contracts to provide related dog control and other animal services.

The first contract called for paying the venerable Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals $8,254—little more than $700 a month—for long-term boarding of stray dogs. But even before the board could consider a motion for approval—a lock in bygone years—the supervisor urged a harder look.

The SPCA, she noted, is “a very admirable outfit but they are also very expensive,” having boarded only five dogs in each of the last two years and just one in 2008.

“We could put them up at the Waldorf,” Chryssos interjected.

Saying she wondered “whether we should do more due diligence,” Roberts recommended sleeping on the matter and taking it up at the board’s next meeting.
That left consideration of the contract with Spring Hill Kennels in Katonah for short-term boarding of canine runaways—up to eight days—at an annual fee of $2,340 along with a daily charge, paid by a dog’s owner, of $28, terms unchanged for three years.

Like the SPCA pact, its approval might once have sparked as much controversy as a motherhood or apple pie endorsement. But witness this exchange—between political allies, not partisan rivals—in the Age of Austerity.

Roberts had already moved a resolution approving the contract and Councilman Chris Burdick had seconded when Chryssos interrupted the vote, saying, “I have a question.”

Chryssos : So . . . did we ask them to reduce their [fee]?
Roberts: Yes.
Chryssos : And they did not reduce them?
Roberts: But they maintained them [without an increase].
Chryssos: Right, well our goal [in appealing to the vendors] was to have people give us a reduction [in the fees they charged].
Roberts: Not everyone did.
Burdick: Some did . . . but not too many.
Chryssos: Is this the only kennel? . . . I know we’ve been doing business with them for a long time and I have a lot of respect for [owners] Mary and Hank [Tschorn], but they obviously know that we sent them a letter in an effort to keep the town’s expenses down—and we were trying to get a reduction.
Roberts: I think there are other kennels in town. However, I think they’re more expensive.
Chryssos: Agreed. But, again, the objective there was for everyone to share in the downturn. For now, we really need to start thinking ahead [on the next budget] . . . so if people come back and do not agree with us, they know we’re going to shop this thing around.

His point made, the deputy supervisor then joined his board colleagues in unanimously approving the Spring Hill Kennels contract.

Dan Wiessner, a veteran of state government reporting, contributed to this story.