Residents blast proposed 6% tax increase in Babylon

Things go wrong in our lives. We have to adjust our budgets. Why is our town not doing the very same thing for us? Dozens of residents showed up at the Babylon Town meeting to voice their concerns about the proposed 2027 budget. The new budget would pierce the tax cap again and raise taxes by almost 6%. The tax cap of 2% doesn't matter anymore. It's like, what's the sense of having a cap if you're going to keep piercing it? The increase would cost the average homeowner an extra $114. I'm paying over $16,000 for taxes, no pool, and now they want to raise it more. Town Supervisor Rich Schaefer says with rising costs, it's difficult to run the town while staying under the cap. All the things that people experience on the home front are experienced by us here at the town, so we've got to continue to balance that. It ends up forcing us to have to pierce the cap or reducing services that the residents have come to expect. But residents say many of the budgeted increases are unnecessary. The proposal includes a 29 percent raise for the supervisor, as well as 13 percent for the tax receiver. How do they justify giving themselves such a raise at this time, you know, right now when things are so everybody's so strapped for cash right now? Schaefer says those numbers are a ceiling and it doesn't mean they'll get the full amount. But he added he's only averaged a a 1% raise each year for the past 12 years as supervisor. And I think people recognize the fact that that's not really what should be. There was no budget vote during this meeting. The supervisor says the board will take a couple weeks to go over all the comments before coming to a final decision. In Lindenhurst, Suffolk County, Jenna Rae Gardner, News 12.