BEACON FALLS — Voters approved the town’s 2018-19 spending plan by 63 votes Monday night at a town meeting at Woodland Regional High School.
Overall, the spending plan is a little more than $7,128,193, which includes a roughly $6.8 municipal operating budget and $305,600 for capital items. The plan passed by a vote of 159 yes to 96 no.
The operating budget is an increase of $74,337, or about 1.1 percent, over the town’s current operating budget. The driving factors behind the increase are mostly contractual. More than half of town spending is for employee salaries and benefits, and wages are going up 2.5 percent under union contracts.
The town’s contract with Winter Brothers to collect refuse is going up 2 percent, or $9,000, to $253,000. The cost of the resident state trooper program will increase $13,700 to $187,108, as the town is expected to pick up 85 percent of the cost of the program.
The budget also includes a $12,000 stipend for the fire chief position at Beacon Hose Company No. 1. It’s the first time the town has paid a stipend to the chief of the volunteer company.
The capital expenditures include $20,000 for a town-wide phone system upgrade that voters previously rejected at a town meeting. The capital items also include $44,000 for a Ford Explorer for the police department, $35,000 to replace portable radios at Beacon Hose, and $20,000 to replace guardrails in town as part of a 10-year plan. Officials anticipate getting reimbursed $30,000 by the state for some of the capital expenditures.
The town’s budget doesn’t include education spending for Region 16, which oversees schools in Beacon Falls and Prospect. Voters approved the roughly $40.73 million school budget at a referendum in May.
Officials said the town’s tax rate is expected to stay flat at 35.9 mills. A mill is $1 in taxes for every $1,000 of assessed property value. Under a 35.9 tax rate, a property assessed at $100,000 will pay $3,590 in taxes. The Board of Finance will officially set the tax rate at its meeting next Tuesday.
“I think that there is a sense of accomplishment, certainly by the members of the Board of Finance and Board of Selectmen that worked together to put this together,” First Selectman Christopher Bielik said after the budget passed Monday night. “We believe in this budget. We think that it is a fair budget. We think that it meets the needs of the town and keeps us operating in the manner we need to without cutting services and without raising taxes.”
Board of Finance Vice Chairman Joe Rodorigo said crafting a budget with no increase in the tax rate was difficult.
“Coming in with a zero mill rate increase in these economic times is kind of a remarkable thing to happen,” Rodorigo said.
The spending plan was the second one that officials sent to a vote. In late April, voters rejected an overall $7,152,946 spending plan by four votes. The first budget proposal would have increased the tax rate by 0.3 mills.
Officials made some adjustments to the plan, but the largest change came from the revised state budget approved by the legislature in May. The revised state budget provides more funding for the town than local officials anticipated, which helped officials keep the tax rate the same without using money from the unassigned fund balance as revenue.
Rodorigo said he doesn’t think the town can count on the state for additional funding in the future.
“We have to be fiscally prudent as we move forward through this budget,” Rodorigo said.
