Politics & Government

Selectmen Make Adjustments to Proposed Town Budget

After spending the last few weeks gathering budget numbers from their department heads, town officials trimmed a bit here and kept some requests "as is."

 

Line by line, the Clinton Board of Selectmen looked at the proposed town budget, making some adjustments and keeping some requests as they stood.

The bottom line is after their review, they adjusted the proposed fiscal year '13-'14 budget by removing an additional $13,580 in departmental requests.

Find out what's happening in Clintonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

All five members of the board approved the proposed town budget of $15.37 million, which represents an increase of 2.89 percent over the current year, or $431,208.

For the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2013, the town budget is $14,939,743.

Find out what's happening in Clintonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

First Selectman Willie Fritz said the largest drivers that led to the increase include debt redemption costs, an increase in projects up for capital improvements, repairs and maintenance for the fire department, increased fuel costs at public works, and the annual mandated contribution to the police department's pension plan.

Fritz noted that the debt number may decrease following refinancing which is in the works.

Broken down, those numbers are included in the departments' overall increases from this year to the new fiscal year and include:

Debt Redemption: request increase of $143,747

Capital improvements: request increase of $79,000

Fire Department: request increase of $33,913

Dept. of Public Works: request increase of $64,386

Police Department: request increase of $84,229

Decreases include the following:

$28,665 decrease in General Government (health and life insurance, overtime insurance, heat and water, and electricity costs went down)

$12,511 decrease in Other General Government (Clinton's per capita dues to the Connecticut River Estuary Planning Agency decreased)

$4,000 decrease in Street Lighting

$697 decrease in Water & Hydrants

$200 decrease in Zoning Board of Appeals

Tomorrow, look for a chart that compares each departments' numbers from the current fiscal year (voter approved) to their requests for the upcoming fiscal year (proposed).


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