Evans Supervisor Mary Hosler, who took office in January, says she blames the town's former elected officials for Evans' fiscal mess. Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw has arranged for the county to provide a $980,000 short-term loan to help the town cover its cash crunch. Hosler, a former banker, says her new budget includes an 11.8 percent tax increase.
"To get out of this, this is not going to be done just on the back of the taxpayers. We've got a plan for economic development. We're going to work closely with Erie County," Hosler said.
The supervisor said she has also implemented a spending freeze, cleaned up the town's books and plans to reduce the town's 87 person workforce through attrition.
Hosler said the problems started in 2007 when the town financed a $12 million upgrade to its water system.
"There wasn't really a good accounting system in place. For the last four years, 2500 missing transactions, throughout a four year period. How do you get a good budget in place? How do you know where you're spending? What do you know those numbers are? Because there's no real good numbers out there," Hosler said.
Mychajliw says, the loan is a win-win for county taxpayers because the money will be paid back with 2 percent interest by May 31, 2017.