East Hampton Approves $85.5 Million Budget For 2022, Hikes Salaries But Stays Under Tax Cap

The East Hampton Town Board last week unanimously approved an $85.5 million operating budget for the town in 2022, one that grants approximately 5 percent pay hikes to more than 100 town employees in an effort to keep them on the town payroll.

Faced with staffing shortages and a chronic loss of employees to other municipalities or employers who offered more pay or less time spent sitting in commuter traffic, the Town Board approved the addition of pay hikes, via job “regrades,” for 115 of the town’s employees.

The addition of the regrades and some other minor adjustments to the original budget presented by Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc in October added about $168,000 to the total spending package.

The final budget approved on Thursday, November 18, actually lowered the total amount that will have to be raised by taxes compared to the original budget by about $23,000, to just over $58 million, thanks to adjusted forecasts of revenues, and remains beneath the state-mandated tax cap — with only about $5,000 to spare. The total tax levy increase will be slightly more than $1.8 million.

The final budget represents a just more than 3 percent hike in overall spending and will mean tax rate hikes of 2.68 percent for those who do not live in East Hampton Village and a 4.45 percent hike for village residents. For a house assessed at $1.2 million outside the village, the new tax rate will add about $60 to the annual tax bill and about $37 to the tax bill of a house within the incorporated village.

The budget taps the town’s $50 million-plus in reserves to help offset some of the spending and keep taxes down. The budget will draw just over $2 million from the town’s surplus reserves to keep the tax levy from rising more.

Town employees’ union representatives have long raised concerns about East Hampton’s salary schedule lagging far behind the pay of other East End municipalities — by as much as 30 percent in some positions. With traffic and long commutes increasingly becoming a major quality of life concern for those employees who don’t live in the town, the town has struggled to keep those it hires and trains from jumping ship for jobs that often were both higher in pay and closer to home.

While the town has been reticent to build sweeping salary hikes into the contracts it negotiates with the unions, the Town Board has used regrades, civil service promotions and “merit increases” in recent years to boost the pay for both union and non-union employees in an effort to stay more competitive.