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Wallkill Valley Times, Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Walden budget approved
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the community come so they can see what
a tedious process it is,” Walden Mayor
Susan Rumbold said. “We go line-by-line
through hundreds of items and talk about
each one. During those discussions you try
to get the budget as tight as possible. You
question the manager, who’s previously
held meetings with the department heads,
then the department heads come in and
have to defend what their budget is. They
have to explain to us why they need
X amount of dollars in a certain line.
Hopefully through that, the board gets a
sense of comfort with the budget.”
Unlike in previous cycles, the village
opted not to use any of its fund balance to
cover a portion of the budget. The adopted
2015-2016 budget included $130,451 from
the fund balance, but the board made the
tough choice this budget season to move
ahead with a plan not buttressed by the
village’s reserves.
Former Village Board candidate
Edward Bates noted at the meeting that if
he would have been elected in the spring,
he would have pushed to use some money
from the fund balance in the budget
to spare local seni