Red Hook WatchIndependent Community Resource
Village

Finance

How the Village raises and spends money — budgets, audited AFR actuals, sewer-fund deep-dives, and the source documents behind every line.
Total appropriation$4.81M
Funds4
Largest transfer$90KWater Fund · FY FY20/21

General Fund

AAFRFY FY24/25
Revenue
$2.61M
Approp.
$2.56M
Net
+$52K
Paid by Village residents·33 FYs·↙ $15K transfer out

Related issues

Who pays for Red Hook Police?
An unexplained $66K writedown on medical insurance, four years running

Rate-funded (user fees)

Sewer Fund

ESAFRFY FY24/25
Revenue
$958K
Approp.
$451K
Net
+$507K
Rate-funded (user fees, not property tax)·10 FYs·↗ $35K transfer in

Related issues

Is the sewer budget realistic?
Is the Sewer Fund's cashflow healthy?
What does the $206K note authorization mean for the sewer fund?
Is sewer record-keeping adequate?
Does rainfall drive WWTP sludge pumping?
Is the sewer fund self-supporting?

Water Fund

EWAFRFY FY24/25
Revenue
$2.38M
Approp.
$1.80M
Net
+$581K
Rate-funded (user fees, not property tax)·10 FYs·↗ $10K transfer in↙ $30K transfer out

Capital Projects

HAFRFY FY24/25
Revenue
—
Approp.
—
Net
—
Debt-funded (not annual levy)·31 FYs
All issues →

Deep dives

Activity-based cost methodology

How fully-loaded service costs are computed for the Village

Plain-English walkthrough of the ABC pipeline as applied to the Village A General Fund: direct lines, benefits + overhead pooled and allocated by payroll share (with the Village's bespoke police shares), dedicated revenue, and residual levy burden. Same numbers the per-fund ABC toggle shows, with the methodology and routing rules called out.

Sewer spending

Account-level burn rates for sewer operations

Where the Sewer Fund's money actually goes month by month — ongoing operations, repairs, septic pumping, WWTP sludge, supplies.

Sewer rates

Rate-setting analysis and scenarios

How sewer rates are calculated, who pays what, scenarios for closing the operating-vs-rate-revenue gap.

Sewer flow & compliance

WWTP operations data + regulatory compliance

DEC monthly operation reports, flow trends, NOAA-validated rainfall comparison, sludge pumping vs rainfall, permit-excursion timeline.

Inter-fund flows

Money moving between Village funds

Every transfer between Village funds — General Fund subsidies to Sewer, capital-projects transfers, reserve drawdowns. Reconciles each outflow with its matching inflow and flags transfers where the two sets of books don't tie.

Village vs Town — per-capita comparison

What each resident directly funds, side by side

Per-capita spending on functionally equivalent services (streets, general government, planning/zoning) compared between Village and Town-outside-villages residents. Reveals where each set of taxpayers carries more of the cost.

Where the numbers come from.Adopted budgets are scraped from the Village's DocumentCenter. Audited actuals come from the NYS Comptroller's bulk Annual Financial Report data. Sewer-spending drill-downs are QuickBooks-derived. WWTP compliance data is parsed from the DEC monthly Operation Reports (DMRs).