The Windsor Town Council held a budget session on April 23, 2025, covering development services, administrative services, general government, community development, general services and capital spending, insurance internal service funds, and town support for education. The meeting was called to order with a quorum present. Presentations and discussions focused on proposed FY26 budgets, performance highlights, and future initiatives.
Good evening. We're gonna hand it over to the mayor. Good evening. I was like, can you guys hear me? But that's all right. Excellent. Good evening. We are going to call this evening's budget session to order. This evening, we will, and I can't see if we have a quorum or not, Deputy Mayor, because I keep a quorum. The room? Yeah. We do have a quorum. Excellent. Thank you. Awesome. So this evening we're going to be covering development services, administrative services, general government, community development, general services and capital spending, insurance internal service funds, and town support for education. Hopefully you all can still hear me. But with that being said, we'll kick off with development services, and I'll turn it over to you, Mr. Susa. And then from there, Deputy Mayor, you can see the hands, so go ahead and call for the hands. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm going to invite up our development services group and our development as they come up. Our development services group is comprised of several different departments. And they will each introduce themselves and present an overview of the service unit's budget. We have another chairs. Yes, we do. Well, good evening, Your Honor, and members of the council. For the record, I am Todd Seeley, town planner, representing development services. And with me tonight, I'll have to go down the line. We have uh our environmental planner, Chloe Thompson, Fire Marshal Dan Velaski, building official David Langworthy, Economic Development Director Patrick McMahon, and Suzanne Chowd, our town engineer. We are here to answer any questions that you might have at the end of our presentation. As I alluded to in our introduction, development services consist of the building department, economic development, engineering, fire marshal's office, and planning. The mission of development services is to serve the public interest by safeguarding public health, safety, and welfare while promoting best development practices and fostering economic vitality. Overall expenditures are expected to come in over budget by 526,000. This is primarily due to the use of special revenue funds. This is mostly due to the special use of revenue funds for the municipal brownfield grant for Stanodyne and the plan of conservation and development. The FY26 general fund proposed budget reflects an increase of 141,000 as compared to the FY25 budget, mostly due to personnel cost. Building safety has successfully completed one full fiscal year of an online permitting system and inspection portal. Building off that system, they have enhanced their capabilities to allow inspectors access to records in the field while conducting inspections. This enhances their capabilities during inspection and allows them to be more efficient with a permit review. There were a significant amount of large projects completed over the current fiscal year, including mechanical upgrades at several existing facilities, a dormitory, warehouse, and a convenience store. There are several projects still ongoing, which include the two apartments in town center and Wilson Park. The fire marshal's office said farewell to Lori Volker. Laurie served as an inspector and then fire marshal in the town for 15 years. Lori has moved on to become the state fire marshal and is the first woman to do so in the state of Connecticut. The Town of Windsor welcomes Dan Velaski as our new fire marshal. He has been the deputy fire marshal at UConn for the past nine years, and we are thankful to have him as part of our team.