Submitted by Bob McGarry, Haddam First Selectman
(April 20, 2023) — The Haddam Board of Finance (BOF) has approved the proposed FY 23-24 town budget. It will be posted to our website shortly if it isn’t there already. Here’s a high-level summary:
Vehicle fuel, heating oil/propane, and electricity makes up much of the increase in the Town Operations and RSD17 lines. Additionally, an increase in the percentage of Haddam students attending RSD17 contributed to the 12% increase in the RSD17 line. Debt service decreased as we’re paying off our bonds. It will continue to decrease in future years unless we assume additional debt.
Some of you may be wondering why the Capital Improvements line is decreasing when in my last article I said we had to keep funding our capital projects. There are two reasons. First, good planning by the BOF. The board increased the capital improvements line last year by $754,000 knowing we’d see a significant increase in the RSD 17 line this year. Second the Capital Plan calls for spending $1,869,100 this year. We’ll use $1,270,000 from our ARPA funds (Covid money) and the rest from the Capital Improvements line.
It’s too early to tell what the impact will be on our mill rate since we don’t know how much funding we’ll get from the state. But if both our and RSD17’s budgets pass as proposed, we could see a 1.6 -1.7 mill increase.
Just a reminder:
- May 2nd – RSD17 budget vote. The proposed budget is posted on the RSD17 website. Last year our voter turnout for this vote was only 13%. Please vote.
- May 3rd – Town Hearing on the budget, where the BOF presents the proposed town budget, answers questions and accepts input.
- May 17th – Town Meeting to vote on the budget.
