BY ADAM ATKINSONNorth Country This Week

POTSDAM — The Potsdam village board of trustees has approved the municipal budget for 2024-2025.

General fund tax rates for village property owners will be slightly increased from the current year’s rate of $17.16355 to $17.48229 per $1,000 of assessed property value, a hike of 1.86 percent.

Overall general fund tax levy for 2024-2025 year will go up 1.9 percent from $3,822,783 to $3,896,392. Total appropriations will increase to $7,763,767 in the coming year from $7,518,322.

This was the first year village officials and department heads used the municipality’s new ClearGov software package. Board members and the treasurer spoke highly of the software and how it allows for better tracking of municipal finances during the budget crafting process and during the year.

“It was our first year working in ClearGov. As we continue forward it’s going to have increased transparency because we will be able to use some analytics and compare back and forth. Staff and the board alike are going to be more comfortable using that, to, you know, document any adjustments or requests in the system. So I think its going to be fantastic,” said Village Mayor Alex Jacobs Wilke at the board’s meeting April 29 when the budget was adopted.

“Given that we had to deal with obligation that the village was on the hook for in terms of contract obligations, inflation, other expenses, we wanted to be conservative and budget for all of those, while still being responsible and I think this budget really did a good job of balancing that as best we can,” Wilke said.

A preliminary version of the budget is viewable at the village website at https://tinyurl.com/4p4djjxy .