Preston — With Tuesday’s referendum approval of both the town and school budgets, the new tax bills for the 2017-18 fiscal year will be mailed on time for the payment period of July 1 through Aug. 1.

Town officials this year delayed the budget schedule until late June in the hopes that the state would pass its budget and provide final state grant numbers to the town. It did not.

Town Clerk/Tax Collector Hattie Wucik said Thursday the information needed to create the tax bills on time was received and processed in time for the usual July payment cycle.

Voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the $3.39 million town government budget and the $11.6 million school budget. Combined with the debt service and capital improvements costs, those spending plans bring the total 2017-18 budget to $16 million.

Residents will find their tax bills slightly lower than the original estimate of 24.2 mills calculated by the Board of Finance prior to the referendum.

The Board of Finance on Wednesday agreed to boost the amount of money taken from the town’s healthy surplus fund from the original plan of $296,000 to $375,000 to cut the tax increase to 1 percent, an even 24 mills. The tax rate this year is 23.75 mills.

Board of Finance Chairman Norman Gauthier said the board was very pleased with voters’ strong support of the proposed budgets and wanted to show appreciation by reducing the tax burden slightly.

Last summer, the town budget was approved at the first referendum, but it took three tries to approve the school budget, pushing tax bills into August.

c.bessette@theday.com