When elected officials and officers of non-profit groups paraded to the microphone at the Suffern Free Library, some were there to plead that state budget cuts be restored and some even had the moxie to ask the five members of Rockland’s Abany delegation to set aside money for new initiatives.

But when Montebello Mayor Jeff Oppenheim spoke, he had a very practical concern.

He didn’t want the cost of road repairs in the village to trickle down to local taxpayers because Gov. David Paterson was cutting into assistance under the Comprehensive Highway Improvement Plan.

Now Paterson says money from the federal economic stimulus program will be used to restore much of the $112 million that was being cut.

If everything holds up, it means that communities other than New York City will get the same amount of CHIP assistance they got for the 2008-09 fiscal year which wraps up at the end of March.

If the usual assistance didn’t come from the state, Oppenheim told state Sen. Thomas Morahan and Assembly members Ken Zebrowski, Ellen Jaffee, Annie Rabbitt and Nancy Calhoun — all of whom represent either all or part of Rockland — that wasn’t going to magically mend the village roads. It was a concern voiced as well by a village mayor who had made the trip from Orange County. 

The roads would still need to be repaired and the only way the village would be able to do that would be to raise village property taxes to fund the work.

It’s true that whether the work is paid for with federal money, state assistance or village property tax receipts, it’s still our tax dollars at work.

But those state or federal funds are coming from deeper pockets than a village government.

If the dollars don’t come from one of those larger, deeper pools, they have to come from a relative puddle raised by a small village.

In this case, it looks like fixing local roads will be one area where what trickles down will be revenue, rather than another expense for local taxpayers.