TOWN OF HIGHLAND, NY — The Highland Town Board approved a $3.8 million budget at its meeting on October 13, a budget that comes in 4 percent under the tax cap for the year. 

The top-line budget number has increased from last year’s budget, going from $3,584,951.49 to $3,768,074.46, a $183,122.97 or 5.11 percent increase. However, the town’s estimated non-tax revenue—the amount it expects to get through grants and other such sources—increased by 24.75 percent from last year, rising $282,716.16 from $1.1 million to $1.4 million. That means the amount the town needs to raise in property taxes decreased by 4.08 percent or $99,593.19, going from $2.4 million last year to $2.3 million this year. 

Town supervisor John Pizzolato highlighted the year’s “wonderful, very smooth budget process.” He said that, because the town came in 4 percent under the tax cap, it gets a 4 percent credit that it can use if needed in future years. 

“That 4 percent gives us that credit, so we’ll be able to go 4 percent over without raising taxes with this tax credit benefit,” he said. “So if something catastrophic happens—if we have to do major replacements, anything like that—we have the tax credit to be able to go into.”

The 2027 preliminary budget is available at townofhighlandny.gov/boards-meetings/budget-policies-laws/.

New digs for the town board

The October 13 meeting marked the first time the board held its meeting in the newly renovated town hall. 

Sitting at a dark, sleek dais at the front of the trim green-and-white meeting room, Pizzolato pointed to the board’s work in funding and managing the renovations as an example of its fiscal responsibility. 

“The reason we were able to come in 4 percent lower is because this town board has brought in $425,000 dollars in the past year for these grants alone. You look around this room; this was a lot of heart, a lot of—a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into the renovation of this room,” Pizzolato said. “Believe it or not, we’re probably about like 80 percent done.”

The money for the renovations came in as a $75,000 grant from former Assembly Member Aileen Gunther. Pizzolato said the grant, as an ADA-compliance grant, helped the town fix the sloping floors in the space. Additionally, he said, the town will be installing monitors that fold out from the walls to provide closed captioning of meetings for hard-of-hearing audience members. 

Pizzolato also highlighted town board members Tom Migliorino and Frank Monteleone for contributing their labor to the project. 

The cost of cops

Additionally highlighted during the meeting were the costs and the benefits of the town’s reformed constabulary. 

The budget includes $110,000 on the “police and constable” line. While the preliminary budget only includes the top-line figure, Pizzolato said the final budget breaks that figure down further, listing $66,513 in labor costs, $8,075 for equipment and $34,712 for contractual expenses. 

The 2026 budget lists $100,000 on the “police and constable” line, money that went to pay the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office for extra coverage it provided in town, as a replacement for the former constables’ services. 

However, Pizzolato claimed that the real cost of the sheriff’s office exceeded that figure, sitting around $105,000. 

“They were probably about six to eight months behind in the billing that they were giving us, so we never had a true cost of what the [sheriff’s office] was costing up until this point… The way it was reported, we only received vouchers up through the first half of the year, so it was only reported as a true cost of $55,000, then we received invoices for over $60,000 for the second half of 2025 and the first half of 2026,” said Pizzolato. “So the program ended up costing significantly more than $100,000.”

The board voted to cancel the town’s contract with the sheriff’s office, giving it a 30-day notice. Additionally, according to Pizzolato, the town is looking over the bills it received from the sheriff’s office to see if any of them can be corrected in the town’s favor.