Bedford's property tax rate would rise 4.4 percent under a tentative 2011 budget filed today with Town Clerk Lisbeth Fumagalli.

While the $24.9 million budget calls for spending less than the town did this year, it increases the tax rate from $28.85 for each $1,000 of assessed value to $29.91/$1,000. The increase in the property tax levy was ascribed to sharp falloffs in other revenue sources, especially the mortgage transfer tax, which has been decimated by the upheaval in the nation's housing market.

Under state law, Westchester towns were required to file "tentative" budgets—essentially first drafts of their spending plans for next year—by this past weekend. That made today the deadline for placing those budgets on the town clerk's desk. The town board now has until Dec. 10 to review and revise the tentative budget and hold a public hearing on it. After town residents have had their say, it becomes the "preliminary" budget. The town board must adopt the preliminary budget, either as submitted or amended, by Dec. 20 or it will automatically become the "annual budget."

Bedford's budget reflects economies hammered out in a series of meetings with department heads and others. It avoids layoffs, a bitter pill placed on the table during late-night budget-slashing sessions but never swallowed.

Instead, with a nip here and a tuck there, town board members were able to wring almost $100,000 out of the budget in economies not likely to be immediately noticed. The cuts were precipitated in part by the sudden nosedive of a once steady if little-known revenue source called the mortgage transfer tax.

Collected each time a mortgage changes hands, it accounted for millions of dollars in income annually for Bedford and represented its third largest source of revenue after property taxes and county sales-tax receipts. Today, it remains the third largest revenue source, but that river of riches was abruptly reduced to a trickle when the bottom fell out of the nation's housing market.

In 2007, for example, as easy credit continued to sustain robust home-buying, mortgage-transfer taxes pumped $2,078,623 into the town coffers, covering fully 11 percent of general-fund expenditures and almost 8½ percent of the entire budget. Three years later, by contrast, the town will be grateful if it collects $850,000, a plunge of more than 59 percent in this once-steady income.

The town's second-biggest revenue source, the sales tax, has also taken a pounding in today's sour consumer economy but have not fallen as severely. Still, they're down 8 percent  ($2.5 million vs. $2.3 million) since 2007. Combined with the mortgage cuts, Bedford's two principal income sources after property taxes have fallen 31.35 percent since 2007.