Morristown offers decreased budget for June vote

The overall proposed new budget set for a vote on June 6 is $9.4 million, of which roughly $7.7 million will be paid for by property taxes and the rest by non-tax revenues. For comparison, the original $10.1 budget would have required nearly $8.7 million in taxes.

The budget cuts $686,000 from the original proposed budget that voters rejected on Town Meeting Day in March and manages to simultaneously keep proposed employee pay raises intact and slash the impact on taxpayers.

It does so in part by using nearly a quarter of a million dollars from the town’s rainy-day fund.

Going into the budget reconsideration discussions that began just days after the March 7 town meeting, the Morristown Selectboard aimed to produce a budget that essentially cut the tax impact in half — from a roughly 28 percent increase in tax revenue.

Town officials and finance department employees did that and then some. The new figures come with a 12.6 percent increase in the amount needed in taxes compared to the current year.

Robust growth in the town grand list — the sum value of all taxable property in town — could drop that increase even further, below the 10 percent mark, according to town administrator Eric Dodge.

“We hit the target of under 14 percent, and there were community members who said they want it in the single digits. Well, the grand list will do that,” Dodge said over the phone this week.

The selectboard at its April 19 meeting approved the budget 5-0, which was no mean feat considering two board members, Travis Sabataso and Laura Streets, were elected March 7 after campaigning against the original budget.

There was some give and take during the April 19 budget discussion, which ran for more than three hours.

On the give side, the board opted to keep the Morristown Centennial Library’s full ask intact, despite earlier proposals for a $74,000 cut to the library’s nearly $300,000 appropriation.

Library board treasurer Stephanie Hoffman, however, said such cuts would not be sustainable because the library would have to dip into its endowment. If that were to happen in subsequent years, and the library were to burn through its endowment, Hoffman said, there would little choice but to make the library a wholly funded department of the town.

On the take side, the selectboard opted to cut $80,000 by foregoing the hiring of a budgeted highway department employee. Dodge said the town hasn’t been able to fill the position for the past two winters, anyway.

To get to that 12.6 percent increase in tax revenue to fund the budget, the selectboard opted to use $240,000 from the town’s unallocated fund balance. Town finance director Tina Sweet said the town’s auditors approved of that re-allocation of funds, since there is currently $900,000 in that fund, and there would still be $660,000 if the budget is approved.

That reserve fund is where any surplus in a given budget year ends up, to be used for a rainy day.

While some residents have warned of a Town Meeting Day repeat — the original budget was shot down 1,441-391 — if the town didn’t cut back on the across-the-board salary increases, Dodge said it’s more important for the town to retain its employees.

“Cutting positions and then cutting the pay of the position that are left has no practical benefit whatsoever,” he said.

He added, “Nobody likes to see an increase in taxes, but we don’t have the ability to ignore the impact of the economy, even at the municipal level.”