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It was truly that for those in attendance at Tuesday night's Town Council meeting. Slides showcased state employment suffering the sharpest decline it has seen in decades.
In addition, a slide showcased the decrease in general fund employment in the town over the past several years.
With Van Winkle predicting that next year's budget would be even worse than the current year's budget due to the recession, he anticipated that changes would have to be made for a proposed 5.6 percent tax increase.
That included the Board of Education's proposed budget increase of 2.8 percent and calculated the effects of revaluation.
A person who owned a median-size home could expect a rise of approximately $400 for the taxpayer in annual taxes with that proposed increase.
With the presentation, however, was the recognition by Van Winkle that the increase was "way too high" for taxpayers to take.
"This is really a difficult year," Van Winkle said. "Overwhelming the budget are issues dealing with our economy. We are certainly in the longest recession since the 1930s, unquestionably.
It is likely to be the harshest and most difficult recession since the 1930s. This is not a year in which we're going to talk about cutting pencils because pencils aren't going to do it."
Numerous cuts were already made by the town, including the slashing of 10 full-time and 14 part-time jobs, a freeze on non-union wages and current negotiations with the town's unions to propose a freeze there as well.
In addition, Van Winkle anticipated a revenue loss in the fiscal year of 2010 near $6 million, including a decrease in the collection of property taxes.
Despite cuts already made, Mayor Scott Slifka made it clear the "Herculean task" ahead of them is to bring the combined budgets to a zero percent increase, with no new spending while trying to preserve community services.
"There's not a lot of options," he admitted. "We have a preliminary list of another $500,000 to $1 million in spending cuts that are highly difficult.
"They involve anything from further staff reductions to the closing of pools. (It's) all encompassing. We're left with very few options. That's what we said it's a Herculean task."
He added that the Board of Education has been informed that they are to decrease their budget to a zero percent increase as well.
"We've informed the board that we expect to them to come in at zero, but that more importantly, there's a way to do that without affecting core services and most importantly, programs like all day kindergarten," Slifka said.
"I want to make it very clear that I and the council intend to protect all-day kindergarten. It is our intention to protect it and we expect that the board will keep it in its programs."
Two formal public hearings have been scheduled for March 26 at 2 p.m. and April 2 at 6 p.m. to discuss a formalized budget once final cuts have been made and approved upon by the Board of Education.
