Bennington budget talks begin today
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By PATRICK McARDLE Herald Staff - Published: January 10, 2009
BENNINGTON — The Select Board will begin the first of three budget sessions at 9 a.m. today in hopes of shaping a budget that Town Manager Stuart Hurd hopes will either be close to level-funded or have little effect on the municipal tax rate.
The proposed general fund budget will start at $6.88 million, an increase from this year's budget of 3.8 percent.
The Select Board will meet with Bennington Police Chief Richard Gauthier, Highway Supervisor Patrick Kinney and the chiefs of the Bennington Fire Department to review the police, highway and fire department budgets today but Hurd said none of those departments were proposing any significant increase.
According to Hurd, the police department is proposing a 3 percent increase; the highway department is proposing a 0.15 percent increase; and the fire department is proposing a 3.3 percent decrease.
"If you look at those three budgets combined, they're close to level-funded," he said.
The highway budget is separate from the town's general fund budget, Hurd pointed out.
"In the overall scope of things, I think it's a pretty lean year and I think the department heads did a good job in presenting their budgets, seeking to level-fund," he said.
While the Select Board has made it clear they would like a level-funded budget, Hurd said he thought it was more realistic to attempt to keep the tax rate level. There's even a possibility the tax rate could be reduced.
The municipal property tax rate in Bennington this year was $0.87 per $100 of assessed value.
After a reappraisal this year, the town was expecting the grand list to go up by 1 percent but the town's chief assessor, John Antognioni, has revised that estimate to about seven tenths of 1 percent. A 1 percent increase would have generated about a penny's worth of revenue for the general fund.
"But we do have unrestricted reserve funds that we can commit as we did last year to reduce the tax rate. We will be attempting to do that again this year, perhaps to the tune of a penny and a half or so on the tax rate," he said.
Voters will face a slightly different format when they are asked to approve the municipal budget this year than they have in about a decade.
For about the last 10 years, the Select Board has automatically included any request from an agency requesting funds from the town if the agency had already had a funding request approved by voters and if the request was level-funded.
In 2008, the Select Board temporarily voted to reduce some of those requests before a second vote preserved the tradition.
Over the summer, the Select Board decided that all agency funding requests, except those from the Bennington Free Library, the McCullough Library in North Bennington and Paran Recreation in North Bennington, would be listed as separate articles on the ballot to be approved or rejected by voters.
The Select Board also decided they would not ask agencies to submit petitions unless they were asking for more money. The decision sparked some conversation about the Bennington Coalition for the Homeless — in 2008, voters approved $25,000, up 10 times from previous requests of $2,500 — but ultimately, the Select Board voted to include that request on the ballot.
If all the requests are approved, about $75,000 will be added to the budget, which Hurd said would mean less than a penny on the tax rate.
All three agencies included in the town's general fund budget are asking for more money: McCullough Library is asking for an increase of $1,900, Paran is asking for an increase of $4,300 and the Bennington library is asking for an additional $23,450.
However, the Select Board can reduce those requests. In past years, they have given the Bennington Free Library an increase but not as much as the library's board requested.
The Select Board meeting today, which is open to the public, will be at the town offices. The next two budget meetings are scheduled to take place Jan. 17 and 24.
Contact Patrick McArdle at patrick.mcardle@rutlandherald.com.
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