The Lisbon town council during the annual budget meeting Tuesday. Screenshot.
The Lisbon Town Council adopted an $9.1 million municipal budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 — a $247,616 or 2.7% increase over last year’s spending.
Homeowners will see a 67-cent or 2.9% decrease in their property taxes, bringing the tax rate to $22.43 per $1,000 of assessed property value. This means a property tax bill for a $200,000 home would decrease by $134.
The version of the budget passed Tuesday is less than the spending plan originally proposed in March, which would have raised taxes by 7.1%.
“The major difference between the proposed budget in March and the updated budget is that we took out a lot of capital expenditure that we originally had in the budget,” Town Manager Diane Barnes said. “We will fund those through unassigned fund balance.”
Most of these are one-time expenses so they would not have any impact on the future budgets, said Barnes. “The major increase of $247,616 is due to the positions that were put back this year which were previously differed due to COVID-19.”
According to Barnes, this year’s municipal budget adds one police officer and firefighter.
The $18.1 million school budget represents a $448,345 increase over the previous year’s budget. Taxpayers will contribute about $7.79 million to the school budget, which will add 36 cents to the tax rate.
The general fund revenue is $4,290,271, which is an increase of $897,412 or 26.5% from the previous year.
The major increases in this year’s budget are the revenue sharing and excise taxes, which have been raised by roughly $300,000.
Moreover, the sewer fund revenue is $1,442, 072, representing an increase of $77,417 or 5.7% from the previous year.
Barns said the town’s unassigned fund balance sits at $3,195,275, as of June 2020. An overlay of approximately $180,000 and $33,000 received in training expenses were added to it.
“We are reducing it to 12% threshold as per the unassigned fund balance policy, which will allow the town to spend $1,179,750 to cover the capital expenses and it still leaves us with $40,973 to reallocate later if we need to,” Barnes said.
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