JAY — A proposed $6.7 million municipal budget will go to a public hearing in March before voters consider it at the annual town meeting referendum April 29.
The Select Board and Budget Committee voted on the 2025-26 proposal Monday.
The public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. on March 24 in the Spruce Mountain Elementary School gym at 12 Tiger Drive.
The budget is $607,542.36, or 9.88%, more than the current budget. A conservative revenue estimate is $3.5 million, which is $621,458, or 21.91%, more than last year. It would mean voters would need to raise $3.3 million, or about $14,000 less than last year.
The $6.7 million doesn’t include the town’s share of the Regional School Unit 73 budget or Franklin County’s assessment.
Approved in the budget was a per diem firefighter to work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. If approved, there would be two per diem firefighters on duty Monday through Friday and one during the weekend. The other firefighters are on-call, paid volunteers.
The package also includes $25,000 in the town government budget line for contingency.
“The idea would be that this account could cover the whole town and could be utilized for things like unexpected retirements, separation of employment, unanticipated benefit increases, etc.,” Town Manager Shiloh LaFreniere wrote in an email. “If an employee separates from the town and has to be paid out earned time it can be a hit on a budget that is difficult or impossible to absorb. The same is true for other benefits. If you have an employee that takes single insurance for instance and they separate and you hire someone on a family plan, that could be a $15,000 hit to a budget.”
Rather than adding in money to each department budget to budget for these types of “what-ifs” this account could be used to cover those,” she wrote in an email.
It was put in the town government budget line because auditors suggested it be “housed” where the Select Board’s other expenses are, she wrote.
There is also an additional $25,000 included in the library budget to start a reserve account in case a 40-year-old boiler or the elevator breaks, among other aging equipment.
There is also a 5% to 7% increase in the budget to allow the Select Board to bargain with three unions. The contracts expire June 30 and the final outcome is unknown.
In addition, selectpersons decided to raise $38,705 through taxation, not including $21,926 for the summer recreation program, for recreation purposes. It would cover such items as parades, recreation organizations liability insurances and fireworks that have been taken from the Tower/Recreation Reserve the past two years. It is an effort to preserve the reserve fund, which has $111,548 for recreation purposes, including maintaining trails and paying for portable toilets for ball fields. Only the Spruce Mountain Ski Club donation of $750 will be taken from the reserve fund.
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