VASSALBORO — Residents at the annual Town Meeting this week approved a $3.1 million municipal budget.

The budget represents a $38,728 decrease from the last fiscal year.

Town Manager Aaron Miller said Tuesday that despite a 5% county tax increase and cost-of-living adjustments in wages for town employees, the decrease was made possible mostly by a $147,000 drop in the town’s capital reserves and an $85,000 cut to this year’s paving budget.

Miller said he won’t know what the town’s mill rate will be until August, but said it is currently $14.40. One mill is equal to $1 in property tax levied per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value.

Close to 100 Vassalboro residents gathered Monday at the Vassalboro Community School to approve that budget and vote on the first 38 articles of the town warrant, Miller said.

All 38 articles were approved by voters, Miller said, but one was amended before being passed. The town’s Select Board had proposed increasing the hours of the town’s part-time police chief, Mike Brown, thereby increasing his salary, but the budget committee proposed keeping his hours the same. Voters overwhelmingly sided with the budget committee, Miller said.

“That really took up a lot of the discussion this year,” he said.

Voters agreed with the Select Board over the budget committee when it came to giving $13,500, rather than $7,500, to the China Regional Lakes Alliance this year.

Voters also approved a $9 million budget for the Vassalboro Community School, which serves about 400 students in prekindergarten through eighth grade. The town does not belong to any regional school district and the community school is the town’s only one, Miller said. As a result, the budget also includes money to pay tuition and busing costs to send the town’s high school students to schools in the area.

The school budget has to be validated by referendum June 13 before it is officially adopted. The referendum will be held from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Vassalboro Town Office, at which time residents will also vote on a site review ordinance and will elect three town office positions.

There is one open position on the town’s three-person Select Board with no one running for it, Miller said, meaning it will be open to write-in candidates.

There are two seats on the school board open, for which incumbents Zachary Smith and Erin Loiko are running for reelection.

All five members of the budget committee were reelected Monday to their positions for another two-year term: William Browne, Donald Breton, Dallas Smedberg, Peggy Schaffer and Phillip Landry.

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