Town Manager Presents Budget Proposal
NEWINGTON - The average Newington homeowner would pay over $5,400 in taxes under a Town Manager-proposed budget, which was presented last night during a public hearing at Town Hall.

       The number is offset slightly by a reduction in motor vehicle taxes due to the state’s imposed 32 Mill cap.

       Town Manager Tanya Lane outlined her proposal-for a town and Board of Education collective increase of 1.7 percent-before a small crowd of meeting goers while noting the a decrease in the town’s Grand List value, as well as both current and anticipated reductions in state aid.

       â€"This has been the most challenging part of the budget,” Lane said of the municipal aid area.

       So far, Newington has received $12.9 million in Education Cost Sharing (ECS) funding-its largest source of state aid-but that was a last minute reduction from the $13.2 million the town was told to expect before it passed its last budget.

       Lane warned that further cuts are still possible as the legislature goes through its ongoing budget cycle in Hartford, but the unpredictable fate of some of Governor Malloy’s more controversial proposals-such as taxing hospitals and shifting the cost of teacher pensions onto municipalities-prompted her to keep them out of her calculations.

       Malloy proposes to reallocate $415 million of the state’s ECS funds to a special education grant. That alone would see Newington gain an additional $3.2 million, but if $1.6 million is directed to the state’s struggling municipalities as his budget draft intends, the grant would fall to around $400,000, according to Lane.

       On the pension side, Newington is projected to bear $3.4 million in costs, should that proposal go through.

       â€"We don’t really think that’s going to pass,” Lane said. â€"Many municipalities are pulling their hair out-it’s a tremendous number. We’d expect the General Assembly to pass it in a different form than it is now.”

       If the legislature agrees to tax hospitals as Malloy is proposing, Newington will receive an additional $2.1 million.

       If the state budget were to pass with all of the Governor’s proposals intact, Newington would see a total loss of $860,000, Lane said.

       Lane’s budget gives an additional 2 percent to both the town and Board side, with the increase for the former coming mostly from contractually fixed salary raises.

       The $117.6 million proposal would seek to raise $87.6 million in property taxes, according to Lane’s presentation.

       â€"The goal is always to maintain our current levels of services to our residents while keeping the level of appropriations at a minimum,” Lane wrote in a budget packet cover letter to the Town Council. â€"To this end, I commend each Department for submitting a budget that reflected nearly a 0 percent increase. Despite our hard work, this year has been made even more challenging because of the many drivers that impacted the budget.”

       The Board of Education had requested a 3.1 percent increase, but Superintendent Bill Collins says that his original 2.49 percent ask would have been enough to cover necessities. Beyond, that, there isn’t much wiggle room to go down, he says.

       â€"I brought in what I said was my absolute bottom line-what I need to educate the student in this community,” he said. â€"That’s not gonna change. I get where she’s coming from-she’s in a difficult position-but I represent the people that can’t vote.”

       The proposal as transmitted by the Board totals $72.3 million, with the addition of funding to cover maintenance work left out of the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) Committee recommendation, and the addition of a second high school STEM academy instructor.

       Last minute additions to the Board’s request included maintenance funding-to be used for a roof and HVAC replacement left out of the CIP Committee recommendation.

       Covering those areas would effectively erase a $350,000 â€"donut hole” left when the Board began covering maintenance projects out of CIP as part of a past negotiation, creating expenditures that were not guaranteed funding as part of a minimum operating budget baseline in later years, according to Collins.
STORY BY MARK DIPAOA  |  Mar 16 2017  |  COMMENTS?