KINGSTON – Ulster County’s 2018 budget was adopted during a brief special meeting Wednesday night. The budget is little changed from the $324-million spending plan presented by County Executive Michael Hein.
Several amendments had been approved in the Ways and Means Committee. They did not affect the bottom line.
The one point of contention was over an amendment restoring $86,000 in
funding for a confidential secretary in the comptroller’s office.
That has been a simmering feud since the legislature cut Comptroller Elliott
Auerbach budget by $200,000 a year ago. Auerbach sued, and lost.
Ways and Means Chairman Richard Gerentine was not forgetting that Wednesday night.
“The thing that irritated me more than anything else that he asked in that lawsuit that taxpayers of Ulster County pay for his attorney costs which I think in his position as a comptroller, he should be saving taxpayer money,” Gerentine said.
That amendment did not get the needed 12 votes.
The budget itself was adopted by a 20-0 vote by county legislators present. Spending for 2018 is down very slightly from this year and so is the tax levy.
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