presentation<\/a> in which he focused on several areas where rising costs were driving the bigger budget.<\/p>\nIn particular, Scelza singled out double-digit growth in employee benefits and debt service payments as the primary forces behind the need to increase taxes.<\/p>\n
\tExpenditure categories2025-2026 (adopted)2026-2027 (tentative)change ($)change (%)<\/p>\n
\tPersonnel services$8,674,118$8,724,237$50,1190.58%<\/p>\n
\tEquipment$104,900$76,500-$28,400-27.07%<\/p>\n
\tContractual (operating accounts)$1,833,496$1,822,825-$10,671-0.58%<\/p>\n
\tSpecial items$872,000$1,306,187$434,18749.79%<\/p>\n
\tEmployee benefits$5,989,580$6,836,244$846,66414.14%<\/p>\n
\tDebt service$1,143,575$1,607,090$463,51540.53%<\/p>\n
\tTotal$18,617,669$20,373,083$1,755,4149.43%<\/p>\n
With a budget of $20,373,083, the village would need to bring in $15 million in property taxes in the coming year, compared to $13,797,247 last year, when the total budget was $18,617,669. Under the state\u2019s tax cap, which is at 2.58 percent, Scelza said the village would only be able to raise the total levy by $355,305. The amount would leave a big hole between what the village could bring in under the tax cap and the proposed budget for the year.<\/p>\n
Scelza also mentioned some adjustments that could alleviate the pain, but concluded that, \u201cEven with these adjustments, the the 2026-27 tentative budget was not compliant\u201d with the tax cap.<\/p>\n
As for the proposed tax increase, it would hit homeowners hard. Scelza said the average value of residential homes in the village was $1,092,441. Under the proposed budget, the village tax on that home in the coming year would be $7,386, which would be an increase of $1,040 over the current fiscal year, or a jump of 16 percent.<\/p>\n
Mullen said he and the trustees were \u201ctrying to craft a final budget that has priorities we\u2019re invested in,\u201d while not undermining quality of life in the village. He also said this was \u201cthe single most difficult budget process I\u2019ve experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are trying to manage is what are the things where you find an expense and you say\u2026we can bring that down temporarily. But even in those situations, you know you\u2019re going to have to bring it back up the next year to catch up. So we want to make sure that we\u2019re not gutting the quality of life spending that we have, but also trying to manage these expenses. And then the final thing that I will just say is there is no penalty for exceeding the tax cap.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Board of Trustees is scheduled to vote on the proposed budget at its April 28 meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Village of Pelham Board of Trustees presented a tentative budget of $20.4 million last week for fiscal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-207926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Village](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/VoP-budget-meeting-cropped.png\")
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