Ansonia Aldermen on Tuesday unanimously passed a $60.7 million budget for 2013 – 2014 to the city’s Board of Apportionment and Taxation.
The budget, which was unchanged from the plan the Aldermen’s finance committee voted on last month, would increase spending 3.6 percent over the current $58.7 million budget.
Taxes would go up too, if the tax board passes the budget as-is, but officials aren’t giving a new mill rate because they said the city is still finalizing a revaluation.
A summary of the budget is posted at the end of this story.
A public hearing on the plan is scheduled for May 13 at 7 p.m. at City Hall, Richard Sturges, the chairman of the tax board, said Wednesday. He said his board will meet May 20 to finalize the spending plan.
Click here for a list of tax board meetings.
Mayor James Della Volpe said early in Tuesday’s meeting that it was the most difficult budget he’s been involved with putting together in the 14 years he’s been mayor.
“You’ve done the best that you can do,” he said to members of the board’s finance committee. “If we cut any further it looks like we’re going to have to lay off people and reduce services, and I don’t think that would do anything to improve our economy.”
Article continues after the video of Della Volpe.
Alderman John Marini, a Republican who has voted against previous spending plans for being “exorbitant,” said the budget endorsed by Aldermen Tuesday was a responsible one.
“The only reason to vote no would be for the sake of voting no, and I certainly wasn’t elected to do that,” Marini said. “I think it was a good bipartisan effort by all involved to have a bare bones budget.”
But Marini pointed to the school budget — which would receive $27,540,000 under the plan voted on Tuesday — as an area of long-term concern.
The school board had requested a $28.8 million budget for next year, a 6 percent increase over the current budget. In the end, Aldermen voted to increase school spending $540,000 — or about 2 percent — over the current $27 million school budget.
Click here for a previous story detailing the school board’s request.
The school district has been battered in recent years as federal and state grants meant to bolster student performance have been disappearing. Last year the district laid off 24 staffers.
This year they’re having trouble working within their budget because of increased costs connected to kids with special needs -— a huge cost the schools never gets reimbursed to the extent it is supposed to be reimbursed by the feds.
In addition, the employee health insurance costs are on the increase, and so is unemployment costs for all those laid off workers.
“The money that’s being allocated, unfortunately, over $500,000 (for the school district), is not going to be able to sustain the current level of services,” Marini said Tuesday. “It’s going to salaries, it’s going to benefit increases, and it’s going to a lot of unfunded mandates that neither we nor our Board of Education have the ability to change or to alter.”
He also suggested reaching out to Ansonia’s state legislators to see if they could help the city receive more state funding.
Article continues after the video, which contains a portion of Marini’s comments.
The chairman of the board’s finance committee, Edward Adamowski, said he was proud of the his committee’s work given difficult financial conditions.
“I think this is one of the best budgets we could possibly come up with to be fiscally responsible for the city of Ansonia and as fair as we possibly can to the taxpayers of the city of Ansonia, without doing any detrimental harm to the city,” Adamowski said.
Article continues after the video, in which Adamowski talks about the budget.
Sturges, the tax board chairman, said Wednesday that members of his board sat in on the Aldermen’s meeting with department heads and said Aldermen “did a real good job.”
“There’s not a lot of room to do much more cutting,” he said. “Our biggest thing that we have to worry about is what is the state going to do to us?”
This month Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposed giving more money in state aid to Ansonia schools — but his plan is just that, a proposal.
And, Sturges said, it’s not yet clear how other proposals by Malloy, like eliminating the motor vehicle tax, would impact municipal finances.
He said he hopes state legislators will be able to give city officials some sort of idea of how those proposals will play out by the time the tax board finalizes the budget.
“As they go along, we might be able to see where they might be making cuts, what they’re doing with education,” he said. “We might not have the exact figures but at least we could get a better estimate.”
The Valley Indy left messages with Board of Education President John Lawlor and Schools Superintendent Carol Merlone Wednesday morning.
Elsewhere, the Ansonia budget includes spending cuts for city government, elections, flood control, fire marshal, the senior center, economic development and the assessor’s office, to name a few.
Some of those departments -— city government, elections, flood control, the senior center -— had actually requested less money for next year. The finance committee obliged.
The largest increase in the budget is slated for capital improvements, which is jumping to $1.2 million next year from $409,000 this year.
That money is being laid out on paper for the city’s river walk, but $800,000 is being returned from the state and is listed on the budget as revenue, Adamowski said this month.
The Ansonia Police Department would receive an additional $263,956 if the budget is approved.
Police Chief Kevin Hale has said the additional money would go toward satisfying contractual obligations and replacing two old police cars.
Alderman Jerome Fainer said the city’s department heads tried to limit spending as much as possible.
“They weren’t looking for any fluff,” he said. “Nobody wants to see any tax increase, but there are certain things we have no control over: contracts, benefits. Hopefully things will get better.”
Ansonia Budget, Alderman Finance Committee Level by ValleyIndyDotOrg
