The Burlington City Council recently adopted Mayor Miro Weinberger’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2016.
The budget does not include a tax increase, the mayor said.
“That applies to all the municipal tax rates including retirement, which for most of the last 15 years has seen an increase. As a result in part of the work that we have done together and with public employees reviewing the retirement system, we are not seeing an increase in that tax this year, and there is significant hope that that trend will continue in future years,” Weinberger said.
The budget projects a 7 percent revenue increase in the city’s general fund, which more than than offsets the 5.4 percent increase in general fund spending, Weinberger said.
The budget also contains the first steps in the mayor’s 10-year capital plan. It sets aside $1 million for the expansion and completion of the bike path from the Urban Reserve to North Beach, and allocates $676,645 toward sidewalk improvement.The plan also calls for renovations to city hall and Leddy Arena.
The budget sets aside funds for long-deferred repair work on the city’s 75-year-old water mains, which were largely to blame for 84 pipe breaks during the past winter, according to Weinberger’s attached transmittal to City Council.
At the council meeting, Weinberger said that a major goal of his for fiscal year 2016 is improving Burlington’s credit rating, which is beginning to recover from a series of downgrades following an improper $17 million loan to Burlington Telecom in 2009.
To meet that goal, the Weinberger designated a $1 million rainy-day fund. The city council plans to increase that amount to between 5 percent and 15 percent of the city’s general fund by 2019. FY16 will be Burlington’s third year with a positive unassigned fund balance since the BT loan, the mayor said.
