Orchard Park Village Board members and the mayor are taking pay cuts for the second year in a row.

Mayor John B. Wilson said the downturn in the economy is still affecting the village. His salary will drop $380, to $8,000, and the four board members will receive $4,000, down $582.

The elected officials took a 10 percent pay cut last year, and wages for the village’s nine employees were frozen.

Workers this year will receive a 1.75 percent pay increase, but the village reduced the hours of some of its part-time workers to save money.

This year, the tax rate will go up 25 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation to $3. “I don’t know what the percentage is,” the mayor said, adding, “We’re still the lowest in the county.”

It works out to a 9 percent increase in the tax rate. The tax levy is $435,234, up 8.7 percent.

“It was a tough budget to put together,” Wilson said. The Village Board had to contend with drastic declines in revenues from interest and sales tax.

Interest revenue was $191,550 three years ago, and last year it was $13,773, Wilson said. Sales tax dropped more than 11 percent over the same period, and the mortgage tax also had a steep decline. At the same time, the village payment for the retirement fund increased.

The village also paid a $16,000 bill, with interest, for an error made in the state comptroller’s office in 1976 when a part-time employee went full-time. He said the original bill was $3,400 in 1976, but the village didn’t know about it at the time.

“The village has been totally unaware of it until last fall,” Wilson said.

He said the village would have liked to fight the payment, but the interest kept climbing.

“I figured I better pay it,” he said.

Wilson also noted the previous two budgets were more reliant on fund balance for the general and water funds.

“It’s OK to do that on a temporary basis,” he said, but he added, “We decided we were going to start replenishing some of those reserves.”