ANSONIA – The Ansonia Aldermen set a referendum schedule for a proposed 2025-2026 budget that could raise the property tax rate by 3.13 mills.
A public hearing and meeting will be held on the proposed budget at 6 p.m. April 21. The Ansonia Board of Aldermen could vote to approve a budget on that date, at which point it would head to voters for final approval.
Check the city calendar for the location of the April 21 meeting. A decision has not been made to whether it will be in-person or over Zoom.
A referendum is scheduled for Friday, April 25 at the Ansonia Armory (5 State St). Voting hours are 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
If voters reject the proposed budget, it will be sent back to the Board of Aldermen for revision.
Budget meetings will be held every other Monday afterward, and referendums held every other Friday at the Armory, if needed, until a budget is finalized. (Note: city officials previously said the cycle would repeat every week. However, that schedule changed around April 21.)
Ansonia Corporation Counsel John Marini said the city’s administration is working to make sure absentee voting is an option for the referendum.
The proposed budget was published on the city website in the afternoon of April 8 (Tuesday), a day after it was approved by the city’s tax board. You can view that budget here.
The proposed budget does not include a mill rate, but Marini and Ansonia Economic Development Director Sheila O’Malley confirmed April 8 that it is based on a mill rate of 29.62 mills, as previously reported by The Valley Indy.
That is an increase of 3.13 mills, an 11.8 percent increase from the current mill rate.
Voters will be asked two questions, according to the charter. Those questions are:
Shall the city portion of the budget, as recommended by the board of aldermen of (dollar amount) for the fiscal year (specify year) be adopted?
Shall the board of education portion of the budget, as recommended by the board of aldermen, (of dollar amount) for the City of Ansonia for the fiscal year (specify year) be adopted?
The proposed school budget totals $39,560,719. The city side of the budget totals $30,053,120. The combined total is $69,593,839. The proposed budget carries a spending increase of $2,531,510, or 3.8 percent, from the current budget.
City-side spending would increase by $526,027, a 1.8 percent increase. School spending would increase by $1,984,507, a 5.3 percent increase.
If the budget were adopted as proposed, a single-family home on Holbrook Street assessed at $180,000 would pay $563.40 more next year in taxes.
A house on Gardners Lane assessed at $248,000 would pay $776.24 more next year.
A house on High Acres Road assessed at $366,000 would pay $1,145.58 more next year.
Members of Mayor David Cassetti’s administration said the proposed budget includes a decrease in the motor vehicle mill rate – your car tax – from 32.46 mills to 29.62 mills. That’s an approximate nine percent decrease.
How A Referendum Is Triggered
Previous stories from The Valley Indy have reported that a referendum in Ansonia is required if the mill rate increase totals three percent or more. That is not accurate.
Marini and O’Malley told The Valley Indy on April 8 that a referendum is triggered if the budget approved by the Ansonia Board of Aldermen represents an increase of three percent or more in net taxes to be collected from the previous year’s budget, according to the city’s charter.
The April 8 proposed budget shows $41,289,085 in total tax revenue to be collected in the proposed budget.
That’s an increase of about 9 percent, compared to $37,864,585 collected last year.
The Board of Aldermen could – in theory – adopt a budget without voter approval, if the budget they approve April 21 gets that increase down to less than three percent. However, Marini and Miller have both said in past comments that that is unlikely to happen on that date.