The Warren Town Council Wednesday evening approved a $24.88 million budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year, passing it unanimously after less than 15 minutes of discussion.
The council’s …
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The Warren Town Council Wednesday evening approved a $24.88 million budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year, passing it unanimously after less than 15 minutes of discussion.
The council’s approved budget will result in a $17.55 tax rate per $1,000 of valuation. The budget required $114,000 in local cuts to keep to the state-mandated tax levy increase of 4 percent. That overage — .41 percent, for a total of 4.41 percent — came following the passage of the school department’s budget last week, which pushed Warren over the limit.
Cuts from the budget to reach that 4 percent limit include $14,000 from the Social Security and Medicare account; $50,000 from the attendance premiums account; and $50,000 from the employee benefits account.
Warren Town Manager Kate Michaud said two of the three cuts, for Medicare/SS and benefits, will be absorbed by up-to-date financial figures which show savings beyond what was original planned in the preliminary budget.
As for attendance premiums, “that is pre-planning for employees that will be retiring, so that is money that we will have to pay out at some point,” Ms. Michaud said. “But what we are going to do is approach things from more of a staged standpoint” and attempt to pay those costs over an extended period.
Wednesday’s meeting was live-streamed to the public and went more smoothly than local officials’ first attempt, when glitches and audio problems hampered the production during the Wednesday, March 25 Joint Finance Committee meeting.
Though councilors Wednesday invited residents to log in via Zoom to ask questions, nobody did.
“I guess we’re not going to get a second season out of this,” councilor John Hanley quipped.
More to come?
Though the budget has passed, there is still time for residents to propose changes. By town charter, residents have until April 13 to submit petitions for a referendum. If petitions sufficient for a public referendum are accepted and certified, that referendum will be held Friday, May 20.