The Summit Town Board approved its 2027 municipal budget by a 3-1 vote on October 22, with Supervisor Roger Gural casting the lone no vote. The budget included salary increases for most elected officials, but Town Clerk and Tax Collector Katie Mohr was left out, and a disputed appropriation for assistant clerk help remained capped well below what the clerk's office had asked for.
Who Got Raises and Who Didn't
According to The Daily Gazette, the preliminary budget raised Gural's own annual salary from $8,000 to $8,500, bumped each of the town's four councilmembers from $1,900 to $1,950 a year, and increased Highway Superintendent Jimmy Dibble's pay from $70,450 to $72,650. Mohr, however, received no increase in her $29,500 annual salary, even as her fellow elected officials saw their pay go up. The Daily Gazette reports that Summit's elected officials received salary increases across the board except for Mohr.
The budget also kept the assistant town clerk appropriation at $3,500, despite the town clerk and deputy clerk having supported a $5,000 appropriation for deputy assistance, per the same outlet's account of unofficial meeting minutes. The clerk and deputy clerk reportedly cited tax collection workload and continuity in the office as reasons for the larger figure.
A Clerk Staffing Dispute Surfaces at the Hearing
The staffing disagreement wasn't resolved quietly. Jason Andra objected to reducing the assistant town clerk appropriation to $3,500, the paper's report notes, while Gural explained that the board had already settled on that $3,500 figure during an earlier budget workshop. The board made no further changes to the preliminary budget at the hearing, leaving the $3,500 appropriation in place despite the pushback.
An assistant town clerk appropriation functions as legal authorization for spending a specified budget amount on office salary, wages, or operating expenses — meaning the $1,500 gap between the requested $5,000 and the approved $3,500 represents real constrained capacity for deputy clerk help heading into 2027.
Where Summit Stands Under the State Tax Cap
Gural pointed to numbers on the levy side of the ledger as well. According to Gural, Summit's proposed budget sat $2,364 below the tax levy limit, a narrower margin than the $3,554 cushion the town had below the cap in 2025, as reported by The Daily Gazette. New York's Property Tax Cap generally limits how much local governments and most school districts can raise their tax levy, capping increases at the lower of 2 percent or the rate of inflation, with some exceptions, according to the Office of the New York State Comptroller.
A notice hosted on Schoharie County's town page had indicated the public hearing on the 2027 preliminary budget was set for 6 p.m. on October 22 at Summit Town Hall, consistent with the date the board ultimately voted. With the budget now adopted, the unresolved tension over clerk office staffing — and Gural's lone dissent — stand as the clearest marks left on Summit's path into the new fiscal year.
