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05/08/2018 04:00 PMDeep River residents were given the details on the proposed $16,993,355 2018-’19 town and schools budget at a May 1 public hearing ahead of the Monday, May 21 budget vote. The budget request, which represents a $195,742 or 1.17 percent increase over last year (primarily from an increase in the Region 4 budget), didn’t raise concerns for what it contained as much as for what it didn’t.
Lack of funding to replace a 35 year-old fire truck (or the town’s aged fire house) drew pointed comments from some residents, while rapidly declining and unpredictable state funding was an area of concern for town officials.
Schools Spending
Presenting the schools’ spending plan, Board of Finance Chairman George Eckenroth said that “approximately 70 percent of [the entire town] budget is used to fund our education system, [with] the remaining 30 going to our general account.”
Eckenroth noted that both the largest increase and decrease in Deep River spending comes from the schools’ side of the budget, resulting in a net increase of about $80,000 in education spending. Deep River’s share of the Region 4 budget approved at referendum on May 2 is $6,683,578, an increase of $102,676 or 1.56 percent over the current $6,580,902; the Deep River Elementary School budget asks for $5,195,793, a decrease of $181,630 or 3.38 percent from the current $5,377,423.
No Funding for a Firetruck
Although one of the largest increase to the town’s side of the budget is seen in the Fire Department’s budget, which at $152,449 is up $33,300 or 28 percent, members of the Fire Department expressed concern with the decision to not fund a new fire truck in this proposed budget.
Fire Chief Tim Lee said he felt very strongly that not funding a new truck is a mistake.
“We are currently trying to replace a piece of apparatus that is 35 years old,” Lee said. “That was the plan to do that, to keep the five year plan.”
First Selectman Angus McDonald said the Board of Selectmen hadn’t added funds to purchase a new truck as the town had applied for a federal Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) that, if approved, would only put the department 12 months behind its usual schedule of replacing a significant piece of equipment every five years.
“This is not a plan to put buying another truck off for another five years,” McDonald said, adding that it was instead an effort to not increase the mill rate in this budget.
Assistant Fire Chief Doug Whittaker said that the town was taking a gamble by delaying.
The “fire department has applied for this grant and received many things from this grant,” he said, but added, “It’s very competitive and by no means is it a sure thing.”
“There is no question that this truck needs to be replaced,” McDonald said. “In the year that’s coming up, we think and I think, that we can do all that we need without increasing the tax on our community…If [the grant] doesn’t work, we’ll be right back here in front of this town.”
The bulk of the increases made to the fire Department budget were for the Fireman’s Incentive Program ($17,500) and Supplemental Insurance ($6,100).
State Funds Uncertain
When addressing the revenue side of the budgets, Eckenroth expressed concern with the unreliability of the state budget.
Throughout the current budget year, “promises of approximately $400,000 [from the state] have been dwindled away, the state has been backing off,” Eckenroth said.
For the 2018-’19 budget, the town predicts the state will provide $1,776,287 or 10.3 provide of the total budgeted revenue.
New Expenses
A new $57,560 line item has been added to this fiscal year’s budget: the Tax Relief Reserve fund. Notified the state would no longer provide this form of tax relief to low-income seniors, the Board of Finance and Board of Selectman decided they had the obligation to take over this funding for the residents.
Another new $20,000 line item in this year’s town budget is the Salary Contingency & Accrued benefits section, which funds unused sick and vacation days of town employees who retire.
“In all prior years when we had retired employees, we went into our surplus and paid those employees what the contract required,” Eckenroth said, adding that “we know there are employees that have announced retirement or are planning on retiring, so we thought that we would bring it into the budget.”
The town is also proposing a more than $200,000 increase to its general fund, raising the town’s reserve from 5.47 percent to 6.80 percent of its spending. A general fund is often described as a contingency or rainy day fund; larger reserves help a town to respond to unexpected expenses and may help it get better rates for borrowing for large expenses.
The 2018-’19 budget if adopted would result in the town seeking $14,955,404 in local taxes, an increase of $496,654 or 3.43 percent.
The Annual Town Meeting of the Town of Deep River will be held Monday, May 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the Deep River Town Hall Auditorium. The Board of Finance will set the mill rate immediately after the vote. For more information, visit deepriverct.us.