SEYMOUR – Voters rejected a combined $70.3 million town and school budget during a second referendum Tuesday (May 5) at the Seymour Community Center.
Members of the Seymour Board of Finance are scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday (May 6) at Seymour Town Hall to discuss budget changes, according to finance board chairman Richard Demko.
A revised budget will be presented to voters at a third referendum scheduled for 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. May 19 at the Seymour Community Center.
Here are the results, and the story continues below.
Question A:
Should the town budget of $27,548,740 be adopted?
Yes: 736
No: 818
Question B:
Should the school budget of $42,742,765 be adopted?
Yes: 705
No: 849
About 10 percent of Seymour’s nearly 11,496 registered voters cast ballots. That’s roughly the same amount of voters who cast ballots on April 21, when the budget was first rejected.
Seymour Board of Education Chairwoman Kristen Bruno was disappointed by the low turnout again and the lack of support. She said teacher layoffs are imminent.
“We sent seven pink slips to first-year teachers,” Bruno said. “Again, we’re disappointed with the turnout. Hopefully we can get the budgets passed at the next referendum.”
First Selectwoman Annmarie Drugonis said she’ll see what else can be removed from the town side of the budget.
“We’ll go back to drawing board tomorrow morning,” Drugonis said. “We know people want to see a zero percent tax increase and a zero percent mill rate increase. But in order for that to even happen with this budget, and after all the previous cuts, we would have to cut $2 million-plus out of the budget. That equates to cutting people and that equates to cutting services, and it’s just not possible.”
Drugonis said funding from the just-passed state budget could help.
“We have information to present to the finance board where we could take the extra $500,000 from the state and we could use it to lower the mill rate,” Drugonis said.
The $70.3 million budget represented an increase of $2.1 million, or 3.1 percent, above the current $68.2 million budget.
The combined budgets set the mill rate at 28.99. That was an increase of 1.27 mills, or 4.6 percent, over the current mill rate of 27.72 mills.
The bottom line combined two budgets: $27.5 million for the town and $42.7 million for Seymour Public Schools.
The school budget represented an increase of 3.4 percent, or $1.4 million, over the current budget.
The town budget represented an increase of 2.6 percent, or about $695,000 over the current budget.
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