DIXFIELD – Selectmen, who met Tuesday night to review the proposed municipal budget, chose to give all nonunion employees an across-the-board 3 percent raise. Town meeting voters in June have final say, though.
Some departments, and Town Manager Nanci Allard, had requested much higher raises for certain employees.
But, Selectmen Eugene Skibitsky, Tony Carter and Raymond “Tiny” Carlton rejected those requests.
They did, however, agree to add $5,000 to the budget for an outside review of town employee salaries to determine if the wages need to be increased.
Selectmen were shorthanded at the meeting, which began at 5 p.m. and ended two hours later. Selectman Montell Kennedy, a SAD 21 school bus driver, had to leave early for a school function, and Selectman Stephen Donahue was absent.
A Finance Committee member said that Donahue showed up for the meeting, but left shortly after.
Skibitsky declined to say if Donahue, whose term is up in 2006, had resigned.
“This is as good as it’s gonna get until July 1,” Chairman Skibitsky said to Kennedy, Carter and Carlton of the four-person board that is to complete the new budget.
When Allard asked what to do about Donahue, Skibitsky told her she would have to ask Donahue himself. Donahue could not be contacted for comment.
Allard said that no one had yet, as of Tuesday, taken out papers to run for a selectman’s seat; Kennedy’s term ends in June.
Regarding the budget, the board tabled discussion on some items to a joint selectmen/Finance Committee meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 13, in the community room at Ludden Memorial Library.
Tabled items included:
• A revised Police Department budget.
• A requested $270,000 road construction bond issue.
• Whether to buy a new road grader outright or pay $27,500 to rent a grader and operator to grade the town’s six miles of dirt roads once, each spring and fall.
• Hiring a full-time mechanic for the Public Works Department.
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