Wilmington residents appreciate the Adirondack Daily Enterprise’s coverage of Wilmington and the paper’s two articles about Wilmington’s 2025 town budget. Based on the number of questions town councilwoman Laura Hooker and I received in the days after the ADE published “Divided Wilmington board adopts $2.49M budget” on Nov. 22, it is clear that the article both piqued interest and left questions unanswered.

Although the calculations and details behind many of the “line items” in the town’s budget are complex, the big picture is simple. In fact, the process through which Wilmington’s budget and tax levy were determined for the year ahead was summarized in a single sentence spoken at the town board’s meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 30.

“I’d like to get this over with,” said town Supervisor Favor Smith.

Impatience and indifference has resulted in a budget that increases the tax levy by around 3.6% and once again pushes past the state “tax cap.”

In a time of lingering inflationary shocks, any small town looking to stay under the state’s “2% tax cap” is likely to face hard work and difficult choices, but staying under the tax cap was a realistic goal for Wilmington. To stay under the cap, the town board needed to bridge a gap of less than $25,000 by cutting spending and/or finding additional non-tax revenue.

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Among the many things I’ve learned in the past four years is that the problems, dilemmas and obstacles on vivid display at the national level are also found in small towns.

To take one example: Because cutting government spending generally angers the beneficiaries of that spending, cutting spending usually requires some mix of vision, discipline and political courage. (Like other forms of courage, “political courage” entails sacrifice and risk, and is therefore perennially in short supply.) There are places in the town budget where projected spending could be trimmed.

Our parks department is losing an employee — yet the budget calls for increased parks department wages. Similarly, the town is going from two elected judges to one elected judge and a court clerk — yet the budget calls for increased spending on the town’s court. There are a half-dozen places where town spending could be cut without much sacrifice — $2,000 here, $5,000 there. Taken individually, none of those steps would do much to stay under the tax cap. Taken collectively, they would.

During the budget process and its immediate aftermath our colleagues waived away most of councilwoman Hooker and my attempts to save $2,000 here and $5,000 there.

This is precisely the wrong attitude to take about spending other people’s money.

A determined town board could have rolled up its sleeves and cut $8,000 or $10,000 in town spending.

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While cutting government spending usually takes guts, more accurately estimating revenues is easy.

Wilmington received around $86,000 in sales tax revenue from Essex County last year. That number has increased significantly in each of the last three years. Yet our 2025 budget only projects $70,000 in sales tax revenue. Increasing that projection to $75,000 would still be cautious, and it would be politically painless. Similarly, a realistic projection is that Wilmington will receive at least $55,000 in STR fees next year. Yet our budget only anticipates $45,000 from this revenue source.

Between sales tax and STR fees, simply using more realistic revenue projections could lop another $10,000 from the tax levy.

This is the point in these conversations when we are sometimes solemnly told that it is important to underestimate those revenue streams in order to generate unspent “fund balance.”

Although no member of the town council disputes the importance of saving for a rainy day, these sermons would have been more effectively expressed while the previous town board was lighting more than $100,000 on re in its unsuccessful efforts to litigate a dispute over a parking lot. It is difficult to take lectures about the sanctity of fund balance entirely seriously when you’ve witnessed gratuitous displays of wasteful spending.

If the concerns about fund balance are sincere, there are additional measures, unmentioned in this article, that the town board can take to cut spending and raise non-tax revenue in the years to come. Those actions, however, will require focus, commitment and a little fortitude.

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In addition to cutting spending and using more realistic revenue projections, Wilmington’s town board should have taken major strides toward staying under the tax cap by updating the town’s short-term vacation rental fee structure. Simply raising the baseline annual permit fee charged to “whole home” STRs (as distinguished from STRs located in “accessory dwelling units”) from $300 to $400 would have brought in more than $10,000 next year — a dramatic step toward staying under the tax cap.

Unfortunately, requests to place increased STR fees on the town board’s agenda at successive meetings were ignored by Supervisor Smith, and an attempt to raise the topic during the budget discussion at the town board’s meeting on Nov. 12 was immediately submerged by interruptions, impatience and confusion.

The town board also failed to include revenue derived from planned “facilities use fees” in its budget projections. By failing to clarify these “use fees” and include them as a revenue source in the 2025 budget, a majority of the town board failed to prioritize the concerns of the Wilmington residents who feel they are being taxed out of their own homes.

$2,000 here, $5,000 there …

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While some go to great lengths to obfuscate, most of Wilmington’s taxpayers aren’t helped by heroic efforts to sugarcoat the truth.

And in this case the truth is simple.

By failing to show the will and determination necessary to trim spending, by failing to adopt more realistic revenue projections and by failing to take simple steps to generate additional revenue, our town board abdicated its responsibilities to the township’s property taxpayers in favor of other priorities.

(Tim Follos is a member of Wilmington’s town board. This is the first part of a two-part commentary.)