FY2024 Town Manager's Proposed Budget

February 21, 2023

Re:    Town Budget for FY2024

This letter accompanies the Manager’s Proposed Budget for FY2024 for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2023.

This budget recognizes the prior-year financial condition of the Town as reported in the latest audited financial statements. Those documents show a General Fund balance of $7,540,475 on June 30, 2022 which includes an Unassigned General Fund balance of $5,893,717 plus $84,557 Non-spendable, $91,509 in Restricted, $1,157,383 in Committed Reserves, and $313,309 Assigned for subsequent year’s expenditures carried forward. For FY2024 we expect non-tax revenue to increase slightly over the previous year.

This budget proposes a total municipal spending of $16,001,546, a $2,833,883 increase over last year’s approved budget. The share of the expenditure committed to the property tax would be $5,317,295, an increase of $1,116,009 over last year’s budget.

This budget would propose a COLA of 7% and an additional market adjustment of 5% for those employees below the area median as recommended by the Personnel Committee.

The budget proposes a new full-time Appraiser. This reflects the recommendations of the Council’s Committee on Personnel.

This budget includes proposed capital spending approved by the Council’s Capital Committee. These include pavement maintenance, a replacement of Squad 6, replacement extrication equipment, comprehensive plan update, one plow truck, a major culvert replacement and fixing the Rt 35/114 intersection.

This budget proposal will receive a Public Hearing in March followed by Council and Budget Committee review actions. The final document will reflect the policy choices of the Council and will be submitted to the voters at the annual Town Meeting in June.

           Sincerely,

           Tashia Pinkham, Town Manager