Endicott Early Retirement Still Leaves Problems

1/7/2013 (Updated 11:31:15 PM)

With 13 Endicott employees taking early retirement, the village is anticipating about a million dollars in savings, but is left with a number of staffing questions...
 
Seven of the village's 27 firefighters, and three police officers are among those who are expected to take the early retirements.

There is still an $800,000 deficit the village is hoping to close by making changes in health benefits and water billing.

"How do we provide fire coverage with a quarter of the department gone? There's a plan that the fire department gave us on how they're going to do that. So we're walking through the stops of making sure that that's going to provide adequate coverage," said Endicott deputy mayor Dave Baker.
 
Baker says the $1.8 million budget gap is from the tax reassessment of the Huron property in the village from $2.4 million to $600,000.