The village plans to spend exactly as much money as it plans to take in, according to the new budget, with $6,281,797 in expenses and revenues expected over the next fiscal year. To pay for the majority of its proposed spending, the village plans to levy — or collect — $4,059,527 from village taxpayers over the next fiscal year, up from $3,914,528 in 2021-22. That 3.7% increase exactly meets the state’s tax cap set for the village, according to village Treasurer Mindy Goddeau. The state tax cap is generally around 2%, but Goddeau said the village was given a higher tax cap this year because the village stayed under the tax cap last year.

Taxes make up around 64% of the total revenue the village is expecting to have in the new fiscal year.

While the village will collect more taxes in the new fiscal year, the tax rate per $1,000 in assessed value will drop from $5.44 in 2021-22 to $5.10 in 2022-23.

The tentative budget estimated $6,145,621 in revenue for the village, $6,559,466 in expenses, and it proposed using $413,845 in reserves. The final budget doesn’t use any reserves. Goddeau said Monday that she was able to encumber money from this past year’s budget to balance the next fiscal year’s budget. She also said the increase in taxable assessed valuation for the village gave the village some additional money she didn’t account for in the tentative budget.

The total assessed value of village properties went down by nearly $2 million from the tentative budget to the final budget — from $798,297,018 to $795,303,703. Goddeau said she got the tentative budget’s property assessment values from a “ballpark” figure from the town assessor’s office, and she got a more accurate number for the final budget from the Essex County assessor’s office. The village’s property assessment values rose by more than $76 million in just the last year, according to the final budget.

The village board held a public hearing for the 2022-23 budget on Monday, Juneteenth, ahead of the board’s regular meeting. No one from the public attended the hearing. When asked why the village board chose to hold its public hearing for the budget and regular board meeting on a federal holiday instead of rescheduling, village Mayor Art Devlin said that “right now, the village isn’t recognizing the holiday.” He said everything the village does as a municipality is governed by union contracts, and those contracts are coming up for review this year and the next.

“They’ll set what dates they want,” Devlin said.

Town of North Elba offices in the North Elba Town Hall were closed on Monday, but the village offices remained open.