LISBON – Town meeting gets under way at 7 p.m. Monday, May 19, at the high school gym, where voters will tackle a 93-article warrant, expected to take three nights to complete.

The Selectmen and School Committee have worked to keep their budgets down, said Town Manager Curtis Lunt. “Both budgets are tighter than usual. The School Committee and selectmen, to their credit, have tried to ratchet things down as much as possible,” he said.

Selectmen worked to spread out costs and there are no “fancy services” to be found in their budget, he said. “Our mission was to have no tax increase beyond inflation.”

As initially proposed, the budgets would have been approximately 7 per cent higher than the current budgets. Now, taking into account the anticipated revenues and new taxable property, Lunt estimated the total combined increase for the town and school budgets will be about 3 percent, which would result in a $.75 increase per $1,000 in the tax rate.

In 2002, it went up by 4 percent, and in 2001 it went up 8 percent. The current tax rate is $25.25 per $1,000 in taxable property.

The proposed town budget is $5,487,580, up by 3.25 percent over last year, and the proposed school budget is $12,302,757, up 1.75 percent over last year.

The Advisory Board is recommending that voters approve the school budget as presented by the School Committee.

On the town side, selectmen propose spending $5,487,580, which is $20,000 more than the Advisory Board is recommending. The Advisory Board will ask voters to make the following cuts: legal, $2,000; general assistance, $1,000; finance, $5,200; police, $7,300; fire, $3,000; animal control $1,000.

The cuts, if approved by voters, will have little effect on the tax rate, as $350,000 is equal to one mill on the tax rate. Most of the increases in the budgets have been attributed to debt service, insurance and wages.

Selectmen are making the following proposals, followed by the Advisory Board’s recommendations in parentheses: police, $992,078 ($984,781); fire $259,213 ($256,213); public works, $561,908 (same); solid waste, $490,259 with estimated revenues of $91,000, leaving $399,529 to be raised through taxation (same).

Issues to be decided include $393,000 bond for several capital improvements in the Water Department.

Voters will be asked to make changes in the parking ordinance, which would reduce the number of parking spaces now required for certain businesses, along with several other zoning changes, all of which have been endorsed by the Planning Board.

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