But during an 11-minute speech to the tax board and the city’s Aldermen the mayor warned that uncertainty over aid from the state could result in major changes before the spending plan is finalized in May.
Click the play button on the video above to see the mayor’s remarks in full.
The budget, as presented by the mayor, would result in the mill rate decreasing from 22.31 to 22.21.
That means a person with a house assessed at $150,000 would see their tax payments decrease 15 bucks from last year.
The mayor’s proposal assumes state aid for education will remain the same as it was last year.
But Gov. Dannel Malloy has proposed a major recalculation of state education funding. Lauretti said Malloy’s plan would result in Shelton losing more than $7 million in “education cost sharing” funds and payments to finance teacher pensions.
Lauretti’s budget would see the city’s school district receive $70,470,000 — the same as Aldermen voted to allocate last year. The school district requested nearly $2 million more than that.
After his speech Lauretti said Aldermen would probably revise that number to deliver an increase to the the city’s public schools.
On the city’s side of the ledger, Lauretti said spending will remain the same except for contractual increases to city employees.
The budget proposal’s overall bottom line would rise about 0.8 percent from last year’s — $122,359,654.
The mayor said state lawmakers should make structural changes to the way pensions for teachers are financed, to move from a “defined benefit” plan to a “defined contribution” plan more in line with private sector employees.
It was one of many pointed critiques he made of state officials, principally Gov. Dannel Malloy. Lauretti plans to seek the Republican nomination to challenge Malloy in next year’s election.
The mayor urged residents who agree with him to share their thoughts with state officials.
He said he’s “pretty confident” the final budget adopted by Aldermen will still contain a slight tax decrease.
The city’s tax board will meet tomorrow to schedule workshops with various city departments.
From there, the tax board has until May 1 to submit a budget plan to the city’s Aldermen, per the city charter.
The Aldermen then have until May 31 to adopt a spending plan for 2017 – 2018.
