CHESTERVILLE — Selectmen and the Budget Committee are presenting different amounts for the 2024 municipal budget to voters at Monday’s annual Town Meeting.
The meeting will start at 7 p.m. at the David Archer Town Hall, 409 Dutch Gap Road.
Selectmen are proposing spending $1.48 million, $88,909 more than this year’s nearly $1.39 million.
The Budget Committee’s recommendation is nearly $1.43 million, which is $47,920 more than this year’s budget. The committee recommends an additional $280 under administration for the janitor, member Anne Lambert said Tuesday. It cut $20,000 from the fire department reserve account and $10,000 from the public works reserve account. It also removed $17,700 for public works, questioning why gravel is being purchased instead of using the town’s pit, she said.
Neither budget includes spending up to $450,000 to buy and equip a firetruck to replace Engine 1. That is a separate article on the warrant.
In previous years, a truck was found but no money was approved to purchase it, Select Board Vice Chairman John Archer said Wednesday. “We want the money there so we have it in case one is found,” he said.
If approved, the article authorizes selectmen and the Fire Department to use money from the fire department capital reserve account and borrow enough to buy and equip a truck no older than 2010. The total is not to exceed $450,000, according to the warrant.
Voters will also be asked to raise and appropriate money for a playground at the Town Office beside the basketball courts.
The article asks to raise and appropriate $3,770 from taxes, appropriate $23,627 left from recreation in 2022, and apply $1,373 appropriated in 2022 from the town’s share of federal pandemic relief, for a total of $28,770.
Voters will also be asked to create a special account for donations for the playground.
“We recently accepted a bid to build a playground here at the town office,” Katlin Hilton, a member of the playground committee, wrote in an email Tuesday. “We had a very generous citizen donate a (four) bay swing set in honor of John Gee.”
Gee was a selectman and RSU 9 school board who died in 2014 at the age of 88.
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