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Wallkill Valley Times, Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Auditor finds Walden
books in good health
By TED REMSNYDER
With budget season fast approaching,
the Village of Walden received a dose of
good news at its Board of Trustees meeting last Tuesday, as the village received
glowing marks for its annual financial
audit. CPA Jennifer George of Vanacore,
DeBenedictus, DiGovanni and Weddell
presented the board with her firm’s findings at the March 1st meeting. “Our auditor’s opinion is a clean opinion,” she said.
“We did not find any material issues with
any of the financial statements, so everything is good to go.”
The auditor’s government-wide statement revealed that the village is currently holding $12.5 million in capital
assets, with $465,000 of debt due in the
coming fiscal year. The village collected
$4.6 million from real property taxes last
year, and Walden’s net position is $8.5 million, an $84,000 increase over last year’s
total. George deemed the village as being
in healthy financial shape moving forward. “It was a very good report,” Walden
Mayor Susan Rumbold said.
The budget process is moving fullsteam ahead, as Village Manager John
Revella and Treasurer Peter Sullivan are
preparing a fiscal plan that will be delivered to the trustees in advance of the
next board meeting on March 22nd. “The
Treasurer, the Manager and the department heads get together and formulate
their respective budgets,” Rumbold said.
“Once they get that data together, the
Manager then meets with all of the individual department heads and talks about
what they’ve asked for and what they’ve
proposed. They trim where they can, talk
about the items the department heads
want, and at the end of the day, the
Manager will give us a proposed budget.”
At last week’s meeting, the board
scheduled five public budget sessions that
will be held at the Village Hall on April 6,
7, 11, 13, and 14th at 6 p.m. each evening.
The board will go through the budget
with a fine-tooth comb at the exacting
meetings. “We go line-by-line, department by department, and talk about what
they’re asking for,” Rumbold said. “The
board will discuss everything with the
Manager and the department heads. If
the board feels there’s a need to trim
more or change numbers, that’s what we
do during those budget sessions.”
The Police Department, Department
of Public Works and the Recreation and
Parks Department are among the village
agencies that will see their budgets examined to make sure that taxpayers’ funds
are being used efficiently. The board will
then vote later in April to adopt the budget once it’s been hammered out to their
satisfaction.
After months of intermittent discussions, a resolution appears forthcoming
about the village’s stance on H.R. 218, also
known as the Law Enforcement Officers’
Safety Act. The federal law was passed
in 2004, and allows current and retired
police officers to carry concealed firearms throughout the country. In recent
months, the village board has debated
whether or not to allow retired members
of its police squad to qualify for a H.R.
218 permit at the village’s police facilities.
Walden Police Chief Jeff Holmes has
drafted a policy that would only let applicants attempt to qualify when there’s an
opening in the schedule for current police
training activities, so no overtime costs
would be incurred to accommodate the
retirees. If the proposal moved forward,
the board would not take direct action
and pass a local law, insteading sending
its recommendations directly to the Police
Department. “It will probably be a general order from the Police Department with
the Chief,” Rumbold said. “The board
was looking at the language because the
Chief asked us to look at it and decide if
we thought it was something that would
be good for the Police Department. It’s
reall HH