Finance board advances budget as presented

REDDING — A nearly $51 million budget will head to a town meeting Tuesday before heading to referendum on May 7.

The budget is about $1.73 million more than the current budget and includes increases in the selectmen’s, school board and Region 9 budgets.

It includes nearly $15 million for the selectmen, which is about $292,000, or 1.98 percent, more than the current budget. Some finance board members asked the selectmen to reconsider some of their line items, but supported the overall number.

The big budget drivers are pensions, social security and other contractual increases.

“That’s a significant hit for us,” First Selectwoman Julia Pemberton said during a recent finance board meeting.

The Redding Board of Education budget is nearly $22.1 million, which is about $938,000, or

4.44 percent, more than this year’s budget. This is less than the 4.69 percent increase initially approved by the school board, which oversees the elementary and middle schools.

The higher increase was due to a calculation error. The school board decided to use the

$112,000 found after the budget was adopted to reinstate programing, such as Spanish at the elementary school, while still maintaining some of the cuts it made before. Among the upheld cuts is an elementary school teacher because of the enrollment projections.

“That 4.4 percent is the intersection of what we need and what we think the community can support,” Superintendent of Schools Thomas McMorran said.

Melinda Irwin, who chairs the Redding school board, said they were comfortable with the class sizes as they stand under this proposal.

“Any further removal of teachers would increase class sizes between 22 and 34 per class,” she said at the meeting.

Increases in special education, health insurance and pensions alone account for more than $1 million, or about 5.1 percent of the budget, Irwin said.

She said the board has been doing things to try to keep costs down with these required increases, such as switching the salary pay scale from 12 steps to

16 and negotiating the transportation contract.

Redding’s share of the Region

9 budget is $13.9 million, which is about $505,000 above this year, though the overall budget is the same. This is because the cost is split proportionally between Easton and Redding based on the number of students each town has at Joel Barlow High School.

Region 9 acts as its own finance board and so its budget does not need approval from the Redding Board of Finance like the ones from the town and Redding Board of Education.

Voters will also be asked to approve up to $2.5 million for the police and fire radio upgrades and $400,000 for the Station Road bridge project. The town plans to borrow for both, although there could be some state money as well.