
Seymour Town Hall.
SEYMOUR — The Board of Finance on Monday narrowly approved a $59.2 million budget for the 2021 – 2022 fiscal year that holds the line on taxes.
The budget was adopted by a 4 – 3 vote, with board members Richard Demko, Beverly Kennedy and Bettyann Peck casting the dissenting votes.
While the budget represents an increase of about $1.1 million, or 1.8 percent, more than the current budget, the mill rate decreases from 36 mills to 34.71 mills.
That means if the budget is approved by residents later this spring, a homeowner with a house appraised at $150,000 would pay $136 less in taxes next year.
The budget next heads to a virtual public hearing scheduled for April 6. Voters will weigh-in shortly thereafter.
Residents can check the town’s website www.seymourct.org for Zoom log-in information. Dates for the annual town meeting and referendum have yet to be set.
Finance Board Chairman Bill Sawicki said the board spent a lot of time meeting with department heads, reviewing their individual requests and scrutinizing the proposal line by line to come up with a fair budget.
“The taxpayers are getting a 1.3 percent decrease in the mill rate which is a good thing, and this town is still moving forward,” Sawicki said. “I think this budget is fair to the taxpayers; it’s fair to the departments. We are keeping the services as they should be, and taxpayers are getting a fair return for their dollar.”
Board member Richard Demko, both during last week’s and Monday’s budget deliberations, felt more could be done to further cut costs.
“I still feel in the middle of a pandemic, where people are struggling, there are some things we can be doing to put some of these bigger ticket items on hold for a year to actually bring mill rate down even more,” Demko said.
Demko suggested taking $100,000 budgeted for a new public works truck in the annual capital improvement plan and putting it off for a year. Sawicki, however, said doing so would only force the town to budget $200,000 for the truck next year, which then becomes more cost-prohibitive.
Demko suggested another $50,000 from the Board of Education’s budget request. Sawicki said the $35.4 million school budget was already reduced from the board’s requested 2.6 percent increase to 2 percent.
First Selectwoman Annmarie Drugonis, indicating the budget was already tight, was opposed to laying off workers. She said cutting $10,000 here or $25,000 there would be detrimental to departments already operating on lean budgets.
“What if we cut another $25,000 from Public Works and then we have a tornado or a freak snow storm?” Drugonis said.
Sawicki said any unspent funds goes to the town’s general fund balance. He was against making further reductions to Drugonis’ proposed budget.
“The one thing this board cannot do is nickel and dime these departments,” he said. “Most of these departments don’t have any increases to their budgets. I get that there’s a pandemic and the economy may not be the greatest, but the Town of Seymour cannot be in a stall. We made cuts; we talked to all the department heads and this is where we are.”
Kennedy voted against the budget because she was opposed to including money for any new hires during a pandemic when people are financially struggling.
The main factors driving the overall increase, Drugonis had said, include a jump in health insurance and trash and recycling fees, along with contractual obligations which are around 2.5 percent for town employees.
In addition to hiring a new, part-time Economic Development Director ($45,000) and additional seasonal employees for public works, the budget includes $4.4 million for the police, which includes funding for a second deputy police chief along with some new equipment associated with a new police accountability bill. There’s also $1.7 million for public works; $1.2 million for garbage collection and a $5,000 boost for the Seymour Land Trust to mark the return of the Christmas fireworks.
The $35.4 million school budget represents the largest chunk of the overall budget.
The budget also includes a $300,000 capital improvement plan to fund bigger ticket items like a new dump truck and storage building for public works and police body and dash cameras (as mandated by the new police accountability bill).