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03/28/2017 12:00 AMBracing for a proposed state budget that could see funding for the town cut, officials have proposed budget cuts for the 2017-’18 town budget.
First Selectman Michael Freda said the town and schools have proposed to reduce the current budget request by $902,105. With those proposed reductions, the total proposed budget for 2017-’18 is $97,518,811, an increase of $3.05 million or 3.2 percent over current spending.
Most of the cuts would come from items for the town and the Board of Education. The cuts were proposed by the Board of Finance, the Finance Department, and Freda.
Freda said that $578,353 would be cut from town capital requests, and the Board of Education would have cuts totaling $328,752. According to Freda, the Board of Education did not plan to cut staff or educational line items, instead making cuts to areas like information technology.
Freda said that the budget is still in the early stages, but the newly proposed cuts would reduce the requested budget increase from 3.9 percent increase to roughly three percent. However, that would still result in a projected mill rate increase of four tenths of a mill, which would mean taxes would go up roughly 1.3 percent.
“To me, that’s still not acceptable,” Freda said.
The current budget includes a 10 percent increase in health insurance for town and Board of Education employees. Freda said that he is trying to bring that line item down so that the budget can be reduced further, adding that he’s trying to shrink the budget increase as much as possible.
Freda said the town has accumulated surplus funds, and plans to use surplus funds from last year to help counteract the potential losses this year.
“We’re doing everything we can to get down to a zero-percent tax increase,” he said.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Cronin said that he understands the problems on the state level and how that affects the town, and that the schools will work to limit the impact of cuts on students.
“If there are going to be reductions, staying away from personnel and items for students is appreciated,” said Cronin.
Freda said that the hardest part of the process when facing budget cuts is maintaining the same level of services without having a tax increase.
“We’re always figuring out what we can cut without affecting services to the public and keeping taxes at a reasonable rate,” he said.
At the end of April, the state may come forward with new numbers for the state budget. If that is the case, Freda will ask for a special Board of Finance meeting to revise the town budget, based on the state’s adjustments, before the town budget goes to referendum in May.