LITCHFIELD — The town’s mill rate will go down next year and the town manager kept his pay “adjustment,” despite a paper ballot challenge during the annual town meeting Saturday.
Town Clerk Doris Parlin said about 50 people turned out to the Sportsmen’s Club, a slightly lower-than-average attendance. Voters passed the municipal budget as proposed and increased the line for Public Works by $6,000 to cover fuel and other operating costs. Funds to the Gardiner Public Library were increased by $600 to a total of $17,582.
The $231,750 administration budget, which included pay increases for office staff and Town Manager Mike Byron, drew the most discussion, Parlin said. Residents, told they couldn’t target one particular salary, such as Byron’s, opted for paper ballots to decide whether to trim the total amount. The vote failed, 20-27.
Byron’s salary will increase from $50,000 to $58,500 under the new budget. He said he considered it not a raise but an “adjustment to parity” after looking at other town managers’ pay and benefit packages. Office staff also saw wage increases, starting at 50 cents an hour.
“It gets them halfway to where they should be,” Byron said.
The new municipal budget is just over $1.2 million. Byron, who has headed Litchfield for three years, called it “lean and mean, but it still preserves all of our typical municipal services.”
No money was set aside for special projects or capital equipment reserve.
Byron said the combined municipal budget, school assessment and county taxes are up $100,000 in the coming year. Revenue is projected to be up that same amount “mostly because of very healthy excise tax expenditures,” he said. That would have left the mill rate as is, at $12.15 per $1,000 of property value. Voters opted Saturday to dip into the undesignated fund balance account for $100,000 to offset property taxes, dropping the rate to $11.95.
To see a decline is “very unusual, especially in these economic times,” Byron said.
The undesignated fund balance had nearly $1 million as of last summer, he said, a “healthy” amount that could be tapped into next year to offset taxes again if need be.
kskelton@sunjournal.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.