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The North Castle Town Supervisor race is heating up with just under a week remaining until the Nov. 8 election.
In the Supervisors race, incumbent William Weaver is running against Howard Arden and faces an uphill battle because Arden won the Republican primary by a 17-vote margin. Weaver, a Republican, was backed by the Democrats and is on that line.
Here are excerpts from an interview with Weaver.
During the nominating process I was nominated by the Republican Party and got a call from the Democratic Committee. They said Id done a great job and were interested in cross endorsing me. So now Im running as a Democrat with Conservative support. Im also supported by Alliance North Castle.
When I was elected the big burning issues were taxes and the decline of the economy. The town financial situation was not good and there was a Moodys downgrade.
The fund balance also got to a low level. I worked on the budget and changed the financial position and at the end of 2010 we almost doubled the fund balance, which is just shy of $2 million. We increased the fund balance through department cost cuttings and increased revenues through sales tax and mortgages, which got better as the economy improved.
We have more money than we thought we had and the town has a contingency budget we didnt touch over the past two years. The financial situation is more stable and were looking good at the moment. We also set up a review task force that assists people who want make renovations on their properties. The task force can approve the request so it doesnt have to go to the planning board. We streamlined the process, which works great and saves residents time and money.
The two percent state tax cap makes it a real challenge to go forward. We want to continue to provide services and make repairs but everything you do counts towards the two percent. We put money into the capital improvement project and borrowed close to $3 million for road repairs and put the principal and interest payments into the budget. We borrowed money but calculated it into the budget and came out with a 1.89 percent tax increase, which was the smallest increase in nine years.
We want to figure out how to go forward with a small tax increase and continue to provide services. As we go forward well look at how we can control expenses and increase revenues. North Castle is a town thats open for good commercial development. We just had the groundbreaking for the Armonk Square project downtown and the Board is approving a 140 bed assisted care living facility on Business Park Dr. This provides good tax money for the town and doesnt cost a lot for infrastructure. We need to try to increase the tax base in different ways.
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