The town’s Board of Finance is examining whether to trim the town and school budgets by another $1 million.
Voters have twice rejected the 2010 – 2011 spending plans for the town and school district.
Another vote is scheduled for May 25.
The finance board met Monday night in an attempt to figure out how to craft a budget that will gain voter approval.
They could make the reductions official at a meeting scheduled for tonight at 7 p.m.
On Monday, the board members came to an unofficial consensus — residents won’t pass anything that raises the tax rate by more than 1 mill.
The most recently-rejected budget would have raised taxes by 1.75 mills.
That would have meant an additional $200 in taxes for a property assessed at $200,000.
To get to the magic 1 mill increase means trimming about $1 million off the budget, which totals a combined $50.3 million.
Discussions earlier on Monday between finance board members, First Selectman Paul Roy and town department heads brought forth about $50,000 in cuts to the town government side of the budget.
Roy is also seeking concessions from unions. Three town employee unions, representing about 120 of 170 full-time town employees, have agreed to wage freezes, with just one doing so in writing, Roy said. Three of four unions have verbally agreed to take four furlough days, which could save up to $110,000. Roy declined to identify the unions that have agreed, citing ongoing negotiations.
“In talking with employees at Town Hall, they understand that it’s a lean year, and they know people are expecting givebacks from employees. We could probably sell town employees, and I mean all town employees, on four days furlough,” Roy said.
Town Hall administrators and Board of Education employees have already agreed to wage freezes for this year, Finance Board Chairman Mark Thompson said.
Finance board member Leonard Greene Jr. took the discussion about town employee salaries one step further at the Monday night meeting, proposing a 5 percent cut to all salary line items.
While the proposed pay cut, which could mean $290,000 in savings, generated much discussion, Greene ultimately rescinded the motion Monday.
He said he would bring it up again after board members have more time to research if and how such a cut could work, and get a more concrete figure for the potential savings.
“We have to get these salary line items down,” Greene said. “We have nickel and dimed this budget all night, and we haven’t made progress.”
Greene’s proposal aside, the cuts to the town side of the budget total about $260,000.
This means the Board of Finance still has to find about $740,000.
Some of the cuts will come from the education budget, but with school board members in their own board meeting Monday night, finance board members pushed discussion of school cuts to tonight’s hearing.
Last year, the school board went with no increase, but that’s simply not possible this year, Associate Superintendent Christine Syriac told the board Monday.
“A zero would be devastating,” Syriac said. “Even a $200,000 increase will be very hard to implement.”
The most recent, rejected budget called for a $690,000 increase to the schools’ current $29.12 million budget.
Click here to read everything the Valley Indy has published about the Seymour budget.
