Budget Time

This week, the Ledyard Town Council voted to send a $48 million dollar budget to a public hearing. The public hearing is coming up in just a little over a week on April 20, 2009 in the Ledyard High School auditorium. The vote came after a month of deliberations by the Finance Committee over the underlying assumptions of the budget and a detailed review of expenses by budget line item.

The Mayor, who has the responsibility for proposing a budget and therefore gets to make the first move in the budget process, was late for the 2nd year in a row in delivering his budget to the Town Council for review. The Town Charter requires that the budget be delivered by the first Monday in March. The Mayor's budget called for maintaining services and no mill rate increase. The Town Council in their review of the budget was forced to cut over an additional $1 million out of the proposed general government and board of education budgets in order to get to the long expected promise the Mayor made for no mill rate increase.

The mill rate is essentially the rate charged for property taxes for every thousand dollars of assessed value of property. Assuming there are no changes in your property value, a no mill rate increase would create no increase in your property tax bill. A noble goal. Unfortunately, because of the lack of accounting to back up the Mayor's proposal the Town Council was forced to cut and cut in order to get to that no mill rate level. With these cuts, services cannot be preserved at the current level.

The Mayor failed to meet the expectations he promised over nine months ago. The Town Councilors did the best they could with the revenues they could expect to receive and tried hard to present a budget that they think the voters could support.

Reportedly, cuts to general government include reductions in code enforcement, public works, administrative support for the clerks office, tax collectors office, and the assistant to the assistant to the Mayor's Office. Cuts to Board of Education include 12.5 teaching positions, half an administrator, and four paraprofessionals. Make sure you turn out for the public hearing and learn about the budget and the process.