The treasurer and the mayor both cautioned that it’s still early in the budget process and the city’s 11-member Board of Aldermen hasn’t even started its review yet.
“Remember,” Wilton said, “the next step of this process is that the board has its opportunity to cut the budget.”
The board, according to the city charter, can only cut from the municipal spending plan, not make additions. The panel has already referred the proposed budget to relevant board committees to review portions of it.
Those committee meetings are set to begin later this month.
Wilton added that a penny on a tax rate equates to about $100,000. So, for example, if the board cuts $1 million, the proposed tax rate would drop 10 cents.
The board has until Dec. 31 to adopt the spending plan. City residents will vote on the budget on Town Meeting Day, March 6.
The treasurer’s calculation shows the current proposed Fiscal Year 2019 budget would increase the municipal portion of the tax rate from $1.59 to $1.82 per $100 of assessed value.
For a home in the city valued at $150,000, the taxes paid based on that rate would rise from $2,389 to $2,735, or about $346. The calculations are for the municipal part of the tax rate only, and do not include the school portion.
For comparison, in July, the board approved setting a municipal tax rate for fiscal year 2018 of $1.59 per $100 of assessed value, an increase of about 8 cents from the previous year’s rate.
Allaire, a longtime aldermen elected to his first two-year term as mayor last Town Meeting Day, presented his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2019 to the aldermen at a meeting earlier this month.
The proposed plan calls for a 4.5 increase in spending. The proposed budget totals $22,023,459, an increase of $946,058 from this year’s spending plan of just over $21 million.
However, when factoring in special ballots items for social service agencies, which the mayor has currently zeroed out in his proposed budget but last year totaled about $300,000, the increase to the spending plan is closer to 6 percent.
Wilton recently emailed an “Interactive Budget Tool” to the mayor and members of Board of Aldermen. In it, she calculates a projected tax impact that’s based on the proposed budget, assuming the same special ballot items are approved by voters this year. The treasurer also assumes a flat grand list and similar revenues to the current year.
Allaire said Friday he had not yet done a tax rate calculation, saying doing so is difficult because key factors in determining that rate, such as the grand list and revenue figures, are hard to predict months in advance.
“Those are numbers that fluctuate to some degree, maybe not a ton,” he said. “The grand list could go up, revenues could be increased.”
The tax rate is officially set by the board in July.
“That’s a lot,” the mayor said of the projected tax rate hike calculated by the treasurer. “I would encourage the Board of Aldermen to look at every nook and cranny to see if we can bring that down.”
Allaire added that when he presented the budget to the aldermen he told them there would be an increase in expenditures in the proposed municipal spending plan.
“There was some spending in there that had been shuffled off in the police and fire (departments) to the unassigned fund balance last year that’s now in the budget,” he said Friday. “That’s $350,000 right there.”