By Terry Duffy
Editor-in-Chief
The Lewiston Town Board will meet at 5 p.m. Monday, Oct. 2, for presentation of the town's tentative $17,287,894 budget for 2018.
Town Board members, Supervisor Steve Broderick and Finance/Budget Officer Martha Blazick will meet with town department heads starting at 9 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 5, for what is expected to be a daylong session to review the numbers.
As it stands, the budget represents a slight increase over the town's $16.820 million 2017 approved spending plan, one that featured the return of a town tax. That plan included a $1.36 per $1,000 tax rate for town and village property owners.
Broderick said the 2018 budget provides for a slight increase in the town's fire fund, and also an increase in the water rate of 15 cents per 1,000 gallons, reflecting costs that were passed on to county localities, including Lewiston, by the Niagara County Water District.
Broderick said the water rate increase to the town represents the first such change in over 14 years.
It was reported at last Monday's Town Board meeting that the board will meet with the town's various nonprofits interests funded in the 2018 budget plan to review their requests on Thursday, Oct. 12. (Meeting time to be announced.)
"The nonprofits, we're not planning on cutting them; they are staying the same as last year. The requests were all within the same framework that we got from those nonprofits," Blazick told the Town Board on Monday.
All meetings will be held at Town Hall and are open to the public.
