FARMINGTON — The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday unanimously agreed with Town Manager Richard Davis’ recommendation to keep the tax rate below $20 and set it at $19.98 per $1,000 valuation.

Davis said there weren’t a lot of options. The 2019 rate is 41 cents more than last year but only 4 cents more than the 2017 rate.

“A mill rate below $20 is very, very good for a service community of our size,” Davis said. “We’ve kept pretty stable over the last five years.”

Davis assumed the board would want to replenish the Downtown Tax-Increment Financing account with $65,000 to bring it back to the target amount of $125,000. The account has about $61,000 in it.

The $19.98 tax rate will create an overlay of $38,587 — an increase of $3,299 over last year. The overlay is used to cover abatements.

“Last year we had abatements that exceeded the overlay, which eats into the unassigned fund balance,” Davis said. “Unfunded liabilities, accruals for those retiring or leaving employment aren’t budgeted for. The unassigned fund balance is the only place for those to come from.

“If we go over in some budgets, under in others we usually end up in the black. We don’t want to eat into the unassigned budget.”

Treasurer Lucy Ann Cook said if someone challenges the assessor and the assessor can’t win, that’s where the overlay comes in.

“We don’t have a lot of overlay,” she said. “It’s healthy but not that healthy. We’re at 98.5% consumption of town budget. Most of it is out of our control. Even though we’re performing the best we can, we only have so much to work with. Turnover is a big issue. We don’t budget for that.”

Davis said increasing the tax rate by 5 cents to $20.03 would add $25,000 for overlay.

Selectman Stephan Bunker noted that the town received $600,000 this year from state revenue-sharing, up $150,000 from last year.

“By law revenue-sharing is supposed to be 5%,” Davis said. “If we got the full amount, that would be more than $1 million a year. It would solve a lot of our problems.

“Towns have been lobbying to get back to 5%,” he said. “The governor approved 2.5% and it ended at being 3%. We still have a ways to go to get to where it should be.”

In other business, the board:

• Approved a liquor license for the new owner of Sushi and Thai Smile Restaurant.
• Authorized an agreement for the Police Department to provide coverage during Farmington Fair in September.
• Approved the warrant for a special town meeting Sept. 10 to consider the transfer/exchange of property to construct a sidewalk for the municipal parking lot and the discontinuance of a town road to maintenance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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