For the past several months, the City Manager and Comptroller and City staff have been putting together a tentative City budget for 2018. The sum of that work is a weighty 376-page document that has been presented to the City Council, which is now doing its due diligence. Department heads have made their own budget presentations at public workshops this month.

Residents can tune to RyeTV for a preliminary understanding of what’s been proposed or read the budget in full on the City website. The Council encourages the community to attend the December 6 meeting at which there will be a public hearing on the 2018 budget and consideration of adopting a local law overriding the state-mandated tax cap. The Council will vote to adopt a final budget December 20, its last regular meeting of the year.

The proposed $39.4 million budget requires a 6.23 percent tax increase and an override vote to fund the estimated $2,615,389 increase in expenditures over 2017. Rye’s tax cap for 2018 is 1.84%.