Riverhead Town budget will increase spending by 8.7%

Riverhead Town Supervisor Yvette Aguiar’s tentative 2024 town budget will increase spending by 8.7%, raise the town tax levy by 4.86%, and boost the tax rate by 4.54% for the three funds that all town residents pay into. 

In addition, it will exceed the state’s 2% cap on tax levy increases. 

A resident who owns property assessed at $50,000 — which is considered a norm — will see a tax increase of $135 over the course of a year. 

Unlike other towns, all residents don’t pay into every individual taxing district. Those for which all residents must pay include the water, sewer, ambulance and garbage district. Collectively, the budgets of these and other taxing districts bring the total amount of projected town spending to $111,392,696.

Ms. Aguiar announced earlier this year that she will not seek reelection, so the 2024 budget will be her last.

The Town Board must approve or amend it by Nov. 20; otherwise, the tentative budget automatically becomes final. The Town Board must also hold a public hearing on the budget before it can adopt it.

In her budget message, Ms. Aguiar detailed some of the cost increases in the budget and some of the larger projects it contained. 

“The town’s most notable accomplishment was moving Town Hall operations to the former Peconic Bay Medical Center,” she said. The town paid $20 million for the Second Street property last year. 

“As challenging as it may be, we continue to see exponential increases in costs and limitations of necessary commodities in the supply chain,” she said in her formal budget message. “The lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, skyrocketing inflation costs, along with rising costs for fuel and goods, has led to budgetary challenges” the Supervisor wrote in the tentative budget message, which is available on the town website.

Despite this, she said, the average taxes for homeowners with assessed values of $50,000 will increase by less than $10 per month, and residential waste cost will increase by less than $4 per month. She said all taxing districts except the General Fund were balanced within the tax cap.

Total budgeted spending for the town operating fund in 2024 is $103,626,300, an increase of $7,343,600 over the 2023 budget, according to the supervisor. 

She pointed out that about 57% of the total 2023 tax warrant went to the Riverhead Central School District and libraries.

In the coming year, the budget allocates $2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act for construction of a new water tank in Wading River. 

The budget also calls for hiring five additional police officers, which brings the department’s total to 100. Ms. Aguiar, a retired New York City police officer, said that in 2022, the town had only 86 police officers. 

The supervisor said the town is facing increased costs for health insurance, which increased 7%, and which boosted the tax levy to 1.65%. 

Ms. Aguiar’s budget also gives a 20% pay increase to members of community boards like the Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals and so on, which are appointed positions. Mr. Aguiar said people serving on the majority of those boards have not received an increase in more than 20 years.