$11M budget headed to voters

Town Meeting day is March 4.

The proposed budget estimates expenditures totaling $11,149,133, a roughly half-million-dollar increase over current year spending, or 4.79 percent. This is offset by anticipated total revenues of $3,054,784, leaving $8,094,349 to be raised in taxes.

The proposed FY 2015 town tax rate is $0.3927 per $100 of assessed property valuation. The roughly 4 percent increase means a Stowe property owner will pay about $47 more in town taxes on a $300,000 home.

The municipal tax rate accounts for only a portion of the total property tax rate, the bulk of which is determined by statewide education rates.

“We always have to make some tough decisions about budgets,” said Stowe Select Board chair Larry Lackey.

This year, and for years to come, those challenges involve trying to maintain and improve town infrastructure and services while carrying more than $1 million in debt on the books. That debt, which comes largely from the bonds to pay for the Stowe Arena and town sledding hill, constitutes a tenth of the budget, and the tax rate increase would be more than cut in half without it. Arena expenses add $510,395 to the budget on top of that.

Anyone for tennis?

Before signing off on the budget Monday night, the select board accommodated some last-minute requests, one of which relies on separate voter approval.

The board agreed to a request from the Stowe School Board to chip in $50,000 to help replace the tennis courts at Stowe Middle/High School. According to Superintendent Tracy Wrend, the project’s anticipated price tag is $265,000. A separate article before voters during the school portion of Town Meeting asks them to approve the project.

Wrend was at Monday’s select board meeting, and she said she expects the community will use the tennis courts during the summer, when school is not in session. The $50,000 contribution from the town could free up funds the school district could use for other renovations, specifically to the elementary school entrance, which Wrend said needs to be re-designed for a “post-Columbine” world.

The board agreed the courts needed work and would benefit the town, but member Neil van Dyke worried it “could easily be interpreted that we aren’t paying for the tennis courts but for elementary school improvements.” He called it a “voter transparency issue.”

Wrend told the select board that school board members take budgets and capital projects “just as seriously as you do,” and the state has guidelines governing how school districts can use funds.

Board member Adam Davis worried the tennis courts, once replaced, wouldn’t be maintained. Wrend said the school district has a “continuum” of maintenance schedules, from ceiling cracks to parking lot resurfacing, and the tennis courts would also have a maintenance schedule. The school district will take care of all maintenance other than mowing around them, which would be handled by town crews.

Lackey said he likes the public benefit, and if voters ultimately don’t feel the same way, they can vote down the article at town meeting.