By DANIEL P. JONES
Courant Staff
Writer
May 16, 2008
— The local taxpayers' group has
submitted petitions with enough signatures to force a budget referendum in June
but the town clerk must make the count official.
"Assuming that at least 2,264 are verified," Town Clerk Essie Labrot said Thursday, "they've gone over the required
number."
She won't finish verifying that the signatures are of registered
If the signatures are good, the town council would be expected at its May 27
meeting to schedule a referendum for June, probably June 10 or June 17.
The council, by a party-line vote with six Democrats supporting the budget and
three Republicans opposing it, adopted a $215.9 million municipal budget April
22.
The budget calls for a 6.9 percent increase in spending and would mean an extra
$515.40 in property taxes a year for the average homeowner in town, someone
with a house with a $354,000 market value after the 2006 revaluation.
The Democrats called the spending plan a purely "maintenance budget"
that includes $124.9 million in school funding. The council trimmed $475,854
from the board of education's recommended spending
plan, savings that Mayor Scott Slifka attributed to a
consolidation of services with the town.
Republican minority leader Leon Davidoff called for sacrifices in town services
to keep
Joe Visconti, another Republican, suggested cutting town jobs but he declined
to offer a budget amendment to do so, or to specify jobs that he thought should
be eliminated when Democrats challenged him to be specific.
The budget requires a property tax rate of 37.64 mills, a decrease of 0.99
mills from the current rate. A mill represents $1 of property tax for every
$1,000 of assessed value.
The taxpayers' group has been touting a report by a town resident, Robert Sisk, that forecasts skyrocketing town costs and taxes over
the next five years.
But town officials, who prepare a budget forecast annually as part of the
review for bond-rating agencies, say the forecasts — both Sisk's and the town's
— do not include any revenue increases from the state or other sources. Such
forecasts show only part of the town's financial picture, said Town Manager Jim
Francis, who is the town's former finance director.
"I don't think that's realistic," Francis said, "because we've
always had changes in other revenues."