Board holds budget work session, adopts tentative 2026 plan

By JEFF MORRIS 

The Bedford Town Board has voted to adopt the tentative 2026 budget, and scheduled a public hearing on the preliminary budget for at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18.

At its Wednesday, Nov. 5, Town Board meeting, there was no actual discussion of the budget, except for Supervisor Ellen Calves saying it will be adjusted to remove $1.8 million that had been included for library funding. That amount is no longer needed as a result of the library funding resolution that was approved by voters on Tuesday, which removes library funding from the board’s budgeting process. 

Calves said there will be a complete budget presentation at the Nov. 18 hearing. Comptroller Brian Kenneally had already posted charts and backup documentation for the presentation on the town website as part of Wednesday’s meeting agenda. Those documents show the tentative budget with proposed expenditures of $40,055,521, compared with $38,391,406 in 2025; revenues of $12,949,371, compared with $11,829,145 in 2025; with $600,000 of appropriated funds, compared with $700,000 in 2025; and a tax levy of $26,506,150, compared with $25,862,261 in 2025. The total assessed valuation is given as $606,998,137, up from $604,849,342 in 2025. The tax rate per $1,000 of assessed valuation would be 43.6676 versus 42.7582 in 2025, a dollar increase of 1.54 and percentage increase of 2.13%.

The board held a work session on the tentative budget Oct. 29 via Zoom, focusing on the town’s largest departments. At that work session, Calves said, “It’s shaping up to be a good budget, and I think we’ll be able to achieve a lot of the goals we want to achieve while keeping it well under the tax cap.”

Kenneally explained that the work session was following a different procedure than in the past, when every department was called on to present their budgetary requests. This time, only the departments with the largest budgetary impact were expected to appear, though all departments were welcome if they had “material changes.”

Those included were the Department of Public Works, police, Recreation & Parks, and buildings, which includes facilities. Kenneally said those four departments “are well over 50% of the total appropriations in the budget.”

In Kenneally’s introduction, he said the town always aims to stay within the tax cap, and explained how various taxing districts, funds, and recurring expenses affect the tax calculation. He focused particularly on the fund balance.

Kenneally explained that appropriating fund balance means using existing reserves. He said the supervisor “wanted to get to a point where we’re not relying on any fund balance,” and that they’ve worked towards having a completely balanced budget. In fact, he said, while they have appropriated fund balance toward the highway fund in the past, they’ve been “doing very well” working with Kevin Winn, the DPW commissioner, so that department has a fully balanced budget, and will not be appropriating any fund balance.

In the general fund, he said, they will be appropriating $600,000, the same as last year. For some historical context, Kenneally said, “We have been showing appropriate fund balance in the general fund, but we haven’t been using appropriate fund balance.” He said this year might be a little bit tighter, just with the normal increases. He noted that in 2021, the fund balance was $23.3 million; in 2022, $28.4 million; in 2023, $31.7 million; and in 2024, $31.4 million. He said 2024 was “a little misleading” because they made an acquisition through the Open Space Reserves, but without that, they actually had growth in the reserve fund balance. “So, we’ve been planning to use fund balance every year, but we’ve been growing fund balance,” he said.

Kenneally said that may change a little bit with increased costs for 2026, but they went from $23 million to $32 million-plus in total fund balance, “so we’re in great shape.”

Calves thanked him for the fund balance explanation. She said, “We increased the use of it as the balance grew, and would like to keep an eye on decreasing that over time — little by little over the next few years, if we possibly can.” She said they want to make sure to keep the reserves strong.

Total appropriations for the coming year are $49.3 million, said Kenneally; last year was $47.5 million. He said the increase is based on union contracts, new debt service, and major increases in pension expenses, but unless they reduce staffing, there’s not much that can be done; “these are kind of like fixed costs in every municipality.”

However, Kenneally added, they will not be coming to the public for that increase of about $1.8 million, which is 4%, “because of how well we’ve done in our revenue sources.” He said revenue forecasts have been accurate for the last couple of years, and he is confident the revenue increases included in the new budget will be reached. Citing the financial report submitted to the board in August, he said they were using those numbers for the 2026 budget, “and we are 100% on track to hit those numbers.”

Each of the department heads then did a detailed review of the various operational areas included in their budgets, with explanations of requests for additional funding, as well as where expenditures were decreasing. There were multiple references to increased electricity costs, though in many cases these were offset by savings and efficiencies in other areas. No major additional expenses were noted.

Kenneally summed everything up, saying there is “a very modest budget increase planned for next year” and noting there are still some unknowns, but that within the month they may have some more answers. “I’ll make whatever adjustments we can prior to December that I’m allowed to do,” he said.

“This was a marathon,” said Calves, referring to the two-hour budget work session, “but it’s good to see everybody — the big departments — and really understand what’s happening with the budget this year.”