Preston pushes budget discussion, vote into June
Preston — Using guesswork and avoidance of key conflicting dates, such as Norwich Free Academy graduation June 15, the Board of Selectmen voted Thursday to set the budget town meeting for June 8 and a budget referendum for June 20 — later than called for in town ordinances.
The town meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. June 8 and the referendum would be held June 20 at Town Hall. The Board of Finance still must set a budget public hearing date, which must be at least 10 days prior to the town meeting.
The Board of Finance last week had requested that the Board of Selectmen set even later dates for the town meeting and referendum, even though it could mean missing the July 1 date to mail tax bills if the referendum approves the town and school budgets.
Selectmen speculated Thursday that the state budget might not be settled even by late June, but with the scheduled close of the state legislative session on June 6, town officials are hoping to have more accurate state municipal revenue estimates in time for the June 8 town meeting.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's proposal to dramatically shift state revenues to towns, especially education and special education revenues and to allocate one-third share of teacher pension costs to towns would leave Preston an estimated $1 million short in revenues, according to previous estimates.
In an effort to cut expenses to prepare for state revenue cuts, the Board of Finance reduced the number of state troopers from two to one, a savings of $209,000 from the $3.4 million town government budget. But finance board members hope residents discuss the options of keeping two resident troopers or possibly contracting with either Ledyard or Norwich for police coverage, both of which made proposals to Preston.
The finance board reduced the Board of Education budget by $248,300, the exact amount the board expected to lose in special education revenues under Malloy's budget. With the additional special education expense, the proposed school budget would have totaled $11.8 million, a 5.7 percent increase. Removing the item brought the total recommended school budget to $11.6 million, a 3.5 percent increase.
Those figures do not include Malloy's controversial teacher pension share, which would add another $457,631 to the total budget. Town officials remained hopeful that the legislature would reject that proposal.
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