The city’s Board of Apportionment and Taxation started to seriously consider trimming the 2010 – 2011 budget during a three-hour plus meeting at City Hall Wednesday night.
The meeting, the second this week, started out with a new proposed mill rate — 26.52.
That number is less than the 27.36 mill rate the tax board was staring at its previous budget meeting on Monday.
And the mill rate shrank as the meeting went on.
What changed?
Every city department head was asked to trim 5 percent from their funding requests, tax board chairman Richard Sturges said.
No vote was taken Wednesday night to officially reduce the proposed budget.
Click “replay” on the chat box below for a blow-by-blow account of last night’s meeting to find out what else is on the chopping block. Article continues after the box.
After looking through each line item several times, the Board of Apportionment and Taxation brought the mill rate down to 25.93 — only a 2.7 percent increase over the current rate.
Under that plan, a homeowner with a property assessed at $250,000 would pay about $170 more in taxes next year.
The number is not final and the tax board was still finding line items to cut from the budget at 10:30 Wednesday night.
There will be a public hearing on the budget proposal on May 10.
