Amanda Tolmach

In a statement last week, the city referred to the so-called “homestead” tax rate, which is paid by homeowners: “The property tax revenue increase is proposed at 12.39% for Homestead, or approximately $574 per the average valued home. The Haberman payment constitutes 83.4% of the Homestead Tax Rate increase. Without Haberman, our increase would be 2.06% or approximately $108 per household. The impact to correct the financial crisis is unfortunate and acknowledged.”

“You had said the levy for the homestead would be $574,” attendee Ron Paganini said. “The above-average houses are going to be close to $1,200, though. I just wanted to clarify that it’s a sliding scale for everybody. It’s not good.”

The non-homestead, or commercial, tax rate, will be just under 44 percent next year, compared with the current rate of 38.4 percent.

Tax rates for homeowners were in double digits in the early 2000s, and rose as

Help Wanted

ACCOUNTING ASSISTANT –ENTRY LEVEL (FT/PT/FLE xIbLE SChEdULE )

Responsibilities include: Assist with billing and input of advertising insertion orders; provide clients and sales reps with invoices or statements; contact past due advertisers for payment, send reminder letters; assist with bank deposits, cash and credit card posting and reconciliations; print daily and weekly affdavits to mail with invoices; assist with reception coverage and other administrative tasks as needed.

Requirements: Must be organized with excellent attention to detail and customer service skills; strong computer skills with profciency in Microsoft Offce; ability to multitask in a deadline-driven environment.

Qualifed candidates can send their resume to careers@liherald.com high as 15 percent in 2013.

Another notable budgetary item was overtime pay for city firefighters, which is up slightly in the spending proposal, to $1.2 million from $1.19 million this year. Overtime has been a hot topic of conversation in recent months.

“I understand the standard practice there, to call in sick and have another buddy come in and do overtime, and they rotate that process,” Resident Christina Kramer said. “Is there a lot of oversight, and can we lower the firefighters’ overtime?”

Police Commissioner Ron Walsh, the acting city manager, said the city was “keenly aware” of the overtime issue. “We fully hear every complaint,” he said. “We are aggressively going after trying to come up with a resolution for that, and I agree with you” that no firefighters should be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime. Last year, professional firefighter Sam Pinto was paid roughly $375,000 in base pay and overtime.

The city claims that its financial position has improved, and that it had been removed from the state comptroller’s list of the state’s most fiscally stressed municipalities.

The next public hearing on the budget is set for May 16, and a work session was scheduled for Thursday, after the Herald went to press.

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Open Houses

Wednesday, May 3

Bridgeview Yacht Club, Island Park

11 a.m. – 2 p.m., 4 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Thursday, June 8

Allegria Hotel, Long Beach

11 a.m. – 2 p.m., 4 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Please Join Us!

We are excited to welcome you to Equinor’s upcoming Empire Wind Open Houses. Join us at one or more of the events to meet one-on-one with project experts to learn more about offshore wind, and about the Empire Wind project.

The Empire Wind projects are being developed with a robust approach to community engagement to ensure public input is considered in project planning. These open houses will provide the community with an opportunity to ask questions, contribute ideas, and visit with project experts.

An activity table will be available for children attending with their parents or guardians. Spanish interpretation services will be available, and light refreshments will be served.

A link to a virtual version of the open houses will be provided at www.empirewind.com/community/communityevents/ www.empirewind.com

For more information and to register to attend, scan the QR code. We look forward to seeing you there!