The Rochester Town Board discussed its proposed 2027 budget at meetings on Oct. 5 and Oct. 14, confronting a projected $3.5 million tax levy that exceeds the tax cap by $488,000. With three bridge projects planned for next year, Town Supervisor Erin Enouen said the town will need to manage its general fund carefully.

“Some of the ways that we can close that gap would be ways that we've relied on in the past. We have been relying heavily on hundreds of thousands of dollars of general fund balance,” Enouen said at the Oct. 5 meeting. “If we were to do that, which we could, we would push the general fund balance below $500,000. And we have built up a highway fund balance from basically zero to over $200,000 in two years. If we were to try to shrink this deficit by using our fund balance, we would basically shrink both of those.”

The board discussed several strategies to address the gap between projected expenditures and revenues. These included reviewing individual budget line items for potential savings, conducting a detailed analysis of departmental fee structures to determine whether fees could better cover administrative costs, and reviewing town contracts that have not been examined recently to identify opportunities to reduce expenses.

Enouen also raised the possibility of temporarily deferring principal payments on debt, while noting that doing so would shift those costs to future years.

At the Oct. 14 meeting, representatives of the Town Justice Court, Elaine Laflamme and Renee Albaugh, asked the board to increase court clerks’ salaries to bring them in line with the salary tiers assigned to staff in the town clerk’s office and to the supervisor’s confidential secretary and bookkeeper. The request would move the court clerk positions from the third-grade tier to the fourth-grade tier.

Leflamme cited a description from the website JobDescription.com to highlight the importance of the clerks’ work.

The description characterized court clerks as “the operational backbone of local court systems,” responsible for accurately recording documents, ensuring notices reach the appropriate parties, interacting with attorneys, police and defendants, and helping members of the public understand court proceedings.

Court representatives also raised concerns about staff safety, citing physical threats and harassment that had led to two orders of protection being issued in the clerks’ favor.

Town Board member Charlotte Smiseth noted that town clerks had faced similar threats. The court representative argued, however, that the court clerks’ location made them particularly vulnerable.

“We are isolated out on Samsonville Road and we have no one around us except for that security officer,” Leflamme said.

The Town Justice Court’s office trailer has also experienced leaks and potential electrical hazards associated with water damage.

Enouen said the board wants to improve security at the court, potentially through a contract with a firm that could provide full-time coverage. She also said she was exploring the possibility of leasing different office space. In the longer term, the town hopes to develop a new municipal campus where the courts and town offices would be housed in the same building.

The salary request prompted a discussion about differences in recent pay increases for town employees. Enouen said compensation decisions had been based on specific requests from individual departments rather than a single, uniform approach.

“We had departments come to the board well before the budget process talking about how they thought that the pay scale for certain positions should be changed,” Enouen said. “And you're making a case that you feel that the clerks to justice should move up in the pay scale in the same way that two of the other positions did. So this is the opportunity to say that but there's not a targeting. It's not a zero-sum game.”