Haff: County will
override tax cap

By Matthew Saari
With the passage of two resolutions providing county employees pay raises, the Washington County Board of Supervisors is set to override the tax cap this year.
And it’s only February.
Hartford supervisor Dana Haff sounded the alarm at a board meeting Friday in Fort Edward.
“By adopting these we will now acknowledge that in the 2019 budget we will exceed the tax cap,” he said. “Payroll is a very large part of our budget.”
None of the supervisors present questioned this and both resolutions were passed in short order.
One resolution provided a 2.32 percent annual increase to county employees enrolled in the Civil Service Employees Association, a labor union consisting of workers in the Departments of Social Services, Motor Vehicles, Information Technology, Department of Public Works supervisors and Probation.
The other resolution provided a 2.49 percent annual increase to the Correction Officers’ Association, a labor union for county corrections officers.
“So already, without buying a box of number two pencils you break the tax cap,” Haff said. “Usually we don’t think we’re going to exceed the tax cap until September.”
In an interview Monday, Haff said this year’s tax cap for the county will be 1.9 percent.
Haff said further pay raises were likely to follow, out of solidarity.
“I doubt that those supervisors that supported Dan Shaw of Easton for county budget officer would have done so if his platform was to override the tax cap,” said Haff. “Payroll is a huge part of the county budget, well over 80 percent, and by accepting the labor unions’ settlement which is a payroll increase above the tax cap, you will bust it just by that alone once you figure in parity for the other non-union workers.”
Haff clarified that he isn’t against giving pay raises to government employees but those responsible for deciding the pay increases need to first examine if such increases are fiscally feasible.
“My premise is you should only pay what you can afford,” he said. “Many citizens are tapped out now regarding their property taxes but that does not seem to bother a lot of supervisors.”

The recently constructed 4G cell phone tower on Dick Hill is up and running bringing an improved signal to many, but there are still a few people that have not seen much in the way of improved signal.

The tower is owned by Horvath Communications and they are leasing space to Verizon. This tower is not exclusively a Verizon one because Horvath is in the business of making money by having providers rent space. The more carriers that are on this tower, the better their bottom line is and justifies building in Hartford. If you are a customer of ATT or Sprint, etc. try calling them and request that they consider coming to the Hartford tower so that you can also get a better signal. This tower can accommodate more than one carrier. Internet and cell is considered a factor in quality of life these days so I would like to see more carriers than just one on this tower.

The Verizon antennas operate on two bandwidths; 1900mHz and 700mHz. The upper band offers clearer cleaner signal but is not as resilient as the lower band. After I communicated with Verizon engineers, they tweeked the tower and increased the 700mHz band to get signal to harder to reach areas. Not all Verizon customers in Hartford will see a benefit. If you live down in a deep shadowed hollow, there is not much help for you other than planting a tall telephone pole and put an antenna atop that to create a hotspot in your house, reminiscent of that TV show Green Acres.

One tip the engineers told me that can help improve your signal is to turn your phone off and then turn back on. Apparently some people never ever turn their phone off, even when charging. Their phone is their alarm clock, watch, etc and is always on. By turning off and then back on it forces the phone to re-search for a new signal. Your phone could be locked on to a weaker signal while ignoring a stronger one. After doing this my daughter’s Samsung Edge went from 1 bar to 4 bars. All just from turning off and back on. It took a few minutes to see the 4 bars as the phone did its searching.

Another thing I discovered by doing a survey in my own house is that it makes a large difference what phone you have. My house has three Verizon phones and they do not all get the same signal strength. Side by side we compared a Samsung Edge and an iphone 5. The Samsung had better signal, so I think a lot of this depends upon what internal antenna the phone was manufactured with. My ancient 12 year old Samsung 3G slider did not see much improvement. I think in order to help that I need to go back in time 12 years when it was considered modern. The tree times I dropped it in my pond over the years and had to dry out in the oven probably has not helped much either.

Dana