Schoharie Suspends Overtime

SCHOHARIE - On Tuesday evening, Mayor Colleen Henry announced her intention to launch an executive order that would suspend overtime hours for Village employees.

Citing her reasoning as budgetary control, she lamented that the Village has been seeing an uptick in work weeks that span into fifty hours or more for routine tasks.

“Other municipalities have been seeing the same thing,” said Mayor Henry. “NYC, Mayor Freitag with Cobleskill, we’re seeing an increase in these suspensions.”

She stressed that any emergency exemptions for public safety, health, or critical infrastructure will still be paid out. However, everyone on the Board wanted to see a reduction back to a forty hour work week. 

“If there’s overtime, there needs to be justification,” Mayor Henry concluded. 

Using the power invested in the mayor, the executive order was passed. Taking effect at midnight that same day, overtime in the Village will be suspended until the order is rescinded by the Board. 

In other news, the Board heard remarks from Assessor Erin Smith on her efforts to increase the senior citizen tax exemption limit now that the state is allowing municipalities to do so.

After successfully pleading her case to the Town of Schoharie last week, she attended Tuesday’s meeting to ask for the maximum allowed exemption to be raised from 50% to 65%, and for the maximum income cap to be raised from $15,600 to $26,500.

“Under the current law, one parcel in the Village is at the 50% exemption,” Assessor Smith said. “If this were to be considered, one parcel would change to 65%, one to 60%, two to 20%, and one to 10%.”

Speaking further on the impact, the average savings for each affected household would come out to around $170, while the rest of the taxpayers in the Village would see a negligible $2 increase to cover the shifting burden.

Every Board member seemed to be on Assessor Smith’s side, with Jeff Palmer stating “That’s very reasonable on my end.”

“This is just the right thing to do,” agreed Deputy Mayor Peter Johnson.

With everyone sharing the same mind, the Board passed a motion to schedule a public hearing for an August date, where the matter will be discussed further before a potential adoption.