When Oxford Selectmen approved a $14,032,790 town operations budget last month, First Selectman George Temple said that “Nobody expects the Board of Finance to say ‘Great job, guys.’”
They didn’t.
The finance board on Wednesday voted to trim nearly $600,000 from the town budget and $154,000 from the school budget and bring a combined $40,818,795 spending plan for next year to a public hearing Monday (April 23). The budget appears at the bottom of this story.
“Unfortunately we can’t give everybody everything they want because the townspeople would hate us,” Lila Ferrillo, the chair of the finance board, said after the meeting.
Board member Tom Kelly added that there have been previous years where the board brought what it thought were very frugal budgets to referendum and voters “threw it in the toilet.”
The budget approved Wednesday represents $26,644,247 in school spending, $13,440,548 for town operations, and a one-time $734,000 expenditure to improve several roads.
Under the proposal the mill rate would go from 23.21 to 24.19, an increase of .98 mills, or about 4.2 percent.
That means property taxes on a house valued at $200,000 would go from about $4,600 annually to about $4,800.
The party line vote Wednesday was 3 – 2, with Republicans Ferrillo, Kelly, and Jack Kiley in favor, and Democrats Nancy Schmitt and Bob DeBisschop against.
Before the final vote, Schmitt and DeBisschop asked other members to present the school budget as it was passed by the Board of Education, without the $154,000 cut, but the motion failed by the same vote.
Four school board members — Chair Paula Guillet, Lisa Hellauer, Gerard Carbonaro, and Stephen Brown — attended the meeting with Interim Superintendent John Reed and Rosemary Hanson, the school district’s business manager.
“You guys caught a break,” Ferrillo told them as they were leaving after the finance board voted to take $154,000 from their budget request. “You may not think so but you caught a break.”
“Go out and pass it,” she added.
Kiley proposed the $154,000 cut after asking town Finance Director James Hliva how much would need to come out of the school spending plan in order for the combined town and school budgets to carry a mill rate increase of less than 1.
“I don’t think $154,000 is a big trim out of that budget,” he said. “I think Rosemary already knows where it is.”
Elsewhere, the finance board proposed $734,000 in spending to rebuild Silano Drive and portions of Oakwood Drive and Redwood Road, in addition to repaving Cortland Place, Prokop Road, Edgewood Road, Crest Road, and Middlefield Road.
The board also opted to postpone several capital outlays to at least next year, including money for a new ambulance and car for Oxford Ambulance Association, an SUV for the fire marshal, and two public works vehicles.
Capital expenses the board did approve included a $15,000 light tower for a fire engine, a $37,496 school maintenance truck, $230,000 to replace a tank on a Riverside Fire Company truck, and $30,000 for a new police cruiser.
After Monday’s public hearing, the budget will likely go to a town meeting May 7, followed by a May 15 referendum.
Ferrillo didn’t seem optimistic about the referendum even with the cuts made Wednesday.
“The grand list has not gone up,” she said during the meeting. “We don’t have the money. When this budget goes out to the people, they’re going to go bananas. They want zero.”
