The town's tentative 2027 budget raises the tax levy 17.8 percent. The trash district and the highway fund carry most of it.

The Town of Schaghticoke’s tentative budget for 2027 asks property owners for $4,071,306, up $614,240 or 17.8 percent from the $3,457,066 raised this year, across the town’s general and highway funds and its fire protection, ambulance, lighting, garbage, sewer and water districts. Total spending would be $7,029,239, up 11.6 percent. speigletown.org requested and received a copy from the Town Clerk’s office, as the hearing notice invites any resident to do, and we host it below; the town has not posted it online. The public hearing is Thursday, November 5 at 6:00 p.m. at Town Hall, together with the hearing on the local law to override the state tax cap, and the board must adopt a budget by November 20.

That override hearing now makes sense. The levy for the town’s own operations, the general and highway funds, rises 18.2 percent, from $1,471,180 to $1,738,529. The state cap would allow growth of about 2 percent plus a few exclusions. Without the override law the board could not adopt this budget.

Where the increase comes from

• Garbage and recycling, $274,950 more. The Solid Waste Improvement District levy goes from $641,550 to $916,500, up 42.9 percent. The contract line that pays the hauler goes from $662,000 to $905,880, which is the first public figure for the new 2027 to 2028 collection contract the town put out to bid in August. Spread across the roughly 2,744 residential units in the bid specifications, the levy works out to about $334 per household, up from about $233, a difference near $100 a year. That is our arithmetic; the exact figure is the Solid Waste line on your January bill. Our garbage contract coverage has the background.
• Highway, $210,627 more. The town-wide highway levy rises 15.1 percent to $630,699 and the outside-village highway levy 45.8 percent to $406,804. Snow removal supplies, mostly salt, go from $109,500 to $166,500. The outside-village fund picks up $181,050 in new debt service, $142,000 of principal and $39,050 of interest, after the board financed the Barton Road culvert replacement this summer. State CHIPS aid for paving rises to $514,784, and the culvert line is cut in half to $100,000.
• General fund, $56,722 more. The town-wide general levy rises 10.6 percent to $565,796. The town’s share of employee health insurance in the general fund goes from $150,000 to $190,000; across the general and highway funds it rises from $320,000 to $388,000, up 21 percent. State retirement contributions rise in every fund. Data processing goes from $18,000 to $22,000.
• Ambulance, $67,000 more. The Hoosic Valley Ambulance District levy rises 9.1 percent to $801,980, all of it the contract with the Hoosic Valley Rescue Squad.

The fire protection contract with Hoosic Valley for the east side of town is flat at $110,137. The three lighting districts and the water and sewer district levies are essentially unchanged.

A new public works administrator

The water and sewer district budgets carry a new line, Public Works Administrator, totaling $144,000 across six districts. It replaces most of the administrative salary and health insurance lines in those districts, which fall by about $105,000, for a net cost near $39,000. The budget does not describe the position; it is the one organizational change in the document and worth a question at the hearing.

Salaries

The elected officers’ salaries match the notice the Town Clerk published October 16: the Supervisor stays at $30,000, council members at $7,200 each and the two justices at $12,650 and $14,855, while the Town Clerk, Highway Superintendent and Tax Collector get 3 percent. The Budget Director line, which shares the Supervisor’s account, rises from $64,310 to $66,420, and the Assessor from $54,660 to $56,300. One small line moves the other way: the Town Historian’s expense account drops from $3,000 to $300.

What the numbers do not tell you yet

The spreadsheet’s preliminary and adopted columns are empty. The notice says a preliminary budget was filed with the Clerk on October 16; if the board changed anything between the tentative and preliminary versions, it is not in this copy. The levy is not the tax rate: your rate depends on the assessment roll, which is not in the budget, so a 17.8 percent levy increase does not mean a 17.8 percent increase on every bill, though the direction is clear. Each fund also applies the same fund balance as this year, $58,308 in the general fund and $456,285 in the two highway funds, so the levy is not carrying the whole increase in spending.

The hearing is the place to ask. Written comment goes to the Town Clerk at 290 Northline Drive, Melrose, NY 12121, or townclerk@townofschaghticoke.org.

The budget, fund by fund and line by line with 2026 beside 2027, is on our budget comparison page. The source files: spreadsheet (XLSX) and PDF rendering.

Sources: the Town of Schaghticoke 2027 Tentative Budget spreadsheet, provided to speigletown.org by the Town Clerk’s office on request, with the town’s 2026 adopted figures in its “current year” column; the Town Clerk’s notice of hearing dated October 16, 2026; the garbage bid specifications for the unit count; and the Barton Road culvert financing notice. Fund totals, percentages and the per-household figure are our arithmetic from the spreadsheet.