The meeting opened with public comment regarding budget and tax rate concerns, followed by approval of previous minutes, formal recognition of the 250th anniversary committee and a commemorative play, and a detailed discussion on terminating the Windsor County Sheriff's Department contract while exploring a regional police model. The board also approved warrants.
Note: The transcript indicates that the decision to terminate the sheriff’s contract was made in a prior executive session and was not voted on during this meeting.
Already? Yeah, hour record. I want to ask a few questions about the budget, and I don't see it on the agenda. So the reason why I think it's important is because people are getting absentee ballots and they want to vote, and I'm not exactly sure they have all the information they need. First, I want to thank you for the town report. I got mine on Saturday. That's not acceptable. Guys, the law says 10 days prior to the annual town meeting, which is Saturday. Um I've asked for him to check into that. I don't know what the penalty is. Um she said I've never had anybody ask that before. Um I'm looking at um page 107 of the new town report. I'm sorry, page we're gonna talk about the town, not the school. Page 140, and it gives an estimated municipal tax rate. Um but I'm confused, and I'm and I hope I can have an answer because I took my last town report and I combined for for simplicity. I combined the general fund and the highway fund because I wanted to know without the solid waste fund what year over year more money was, and it is when you combine those two, and the budgets are asking for so much money, but really what matters to residents is the property taxes. So if you do do that math, it increases year over year by 241,000. If you take the articles that were voted on last year compared to the articles that we'll vote on Tuesday, it's 241,000 difference. If you do that on a percentage basis, that alone is 9.6% up in taxes year over year for those two funds. But yet I'm reading in the town report here on page 140. Um, it says it doesn't say that. Um it says like seven percent. So can you clarify that? Yeah, I can absolutely do that for town meeting. Not tonight, set all the numbers in front of me. Um, but I will look into that how it really numbers were double and triple checked um by our team, but I will I will ensure take a look at it. Well, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because there's a little chatter outside about you know why is the school up so much and the town not. I the narrative of that is in fact it's turning out to be the opposite, well, not complete opposite, but it's reversing because while the budget might be up 3.78 or 3.87, the tax rate needs to climb dramatically. And then and that's due to the use of prior years fund balance to offset property taxes, and this year we had less fund balance to work with. But I also noticed we've got a hiccup in delinquent taxes. That report was published as of that day. Uh those publicly taxes typically settle within the next couple of months. So my next question is can you say now because if you take the special articles, and I know in the past we've done this before the town meeting, I mean, we're being broadcast now, and I really feel that people need to know because of absentee balance. Can you say what the taxes will be if all articles passed? Because that's what the school does. The school has estimated what the homestead and the non-homestead will be a complete unit, one size there. You have what it is. And I have been asked to produce that from a board member. Um, and I did tell that board member I would have that prepared, and it will be prepared uh this week for a town meeting. Um that will be a tax rate if all articles pass, that's what you're looking for, right? It's the most straightforward way. I did it, it's a little scary. It's 20.58 cents. That's a lot of money, folks. That's a really lot of money. And I'm not saying to vote, no. I'm saying that you have in your life in my life right now at my farm, I have one house, a bunch of barns, a bunch of woods, and a bunch of fields. I pay 10,240 in property taxes to the town. That's 28.05 every day of my life. That's a lot of money to me.