Town Budget Released Today

The town budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year will be presented to council members and released to the public for the first time today.

The first public hearing on the budget will be April 4, at 7 p.m., in the Council Chambers at .

At the on March 5, Town Manager Barbara Gilbert said department heads understood the tough economic times and have only requested the vital and necessary increases in their individual budgets.

"It is ugly to put it bluntly," she said at the meeting.

The town has deferred some capital improvement projects and expects to have to pay for some of the projects this year, Gilbert previously said. The staff has put together a comprehensive five-year capital improvement plan to address those projects.

The was $60,090,177, which was $1,047,967 or an 1.8% increase over the previous year's budget. The mill rate was set at 24.5 mills per $1,000 of assessed property value, which was an increase of 2.9%.

Everything stayed flat in the 2011-2012 fiscal budget with the only increases in petition contributions and health insurance, according to town staff. All town employees agreed to not take a salary increase.

However, the teachers union took their salary increases in the last year of their contract. The Board of Education approved the new . In this new contract, the teachers would receive no wage increase and agreed to pay 18.5 percent of the healthcare premium cost share in the first year.

The budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year is expected to be approved by the third week of May and it must be adopted by May 21. The tax bills should be sent to residents during the first full week of June.

To view the whole the budget workshop schedule, see the attached PDF.