SWEDEN – Voters will be asked to approve a municipal budget increase of 10.5 percent at Saturday’s annual town meeting.

The meeting will begin at 1 p.m. at Sweden Town Hall on Route 93.

Selectman Warren Noble said the board and the Budget Committee decided this was the year to get serious about a road maintenance program, after seven or eight years of no extra spending.

“The biggest thing is for the voters to voice their opinion,” he said about the proposed jump in summer road maintenance from $33,000 last year to $45,000. “We need to get on a maintenance program, and I don’t think it’s taking it on all at once.”

The increase will pay for extra road work in terms of ditching, culvert installation and brush removal, he said. Winter road maintenance, which the town contracts to a private company, accounts for another large chunk of the budget increase.

The total proposed budget for 2004 is $273,439, which is a 24 percent increase over last year’s budget of $219,150.

Noble said if all 42 articles on the warrant are passed, the town’s present tax rate of $16.75 per $1,000 of valuation will increase to $18.50.

“Obviously, it’s important for them to be there,” he said. The town has a population of around 324 year-round residents.

A new position of cemetery sexton is being proposed this year, he said. The person hired would survey all of the town’s ancient burial grounds “to find out once and for all what their status is.”

In the case of some of the older, more remote cemeteries, it is unclear whether the town is still responsible for them or not, he said.

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