The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Finance board adopts $3.16M municipal budget
GOSHEN — The Board of Finance Wednesday night adopted a 2020-21 budget that reflects a 0.7 percent increase in spending for the coming year.
The town’s operating budget totals $3,165,896, an increase of $24,829 over current levels. “Almost the entire increase is due to the increase in tipping fees for solid waste disposal, $23,829,” said First Selectman Robert Valentine.
“For the first time in memory, the budget did not include appropriations for capital expenses, except for $5,500 for the preservation of town clerk documents,” Valentine said.
Capital expense requests, he said, totaled $993,980. “Those funds that might otherwise have been appropriated for capital expenses will remain in fund balance,” Valentine said. “(The fund balance) is estimated to be $1.915 million by the end of 2021. It is hoped that sometime in the future, the 2020-21 capital requests can be reconsidered, when townspeople can vote on the approprition at (a) town meeting.”
Valentine said the capital expense requests were not pressing. “We thought it was important for the townspeople to vote on capital spending, but first we needed a budget to be passed,” he said “We didn’t want to hold up our mill rate. It’s 19.6, and it has not gone up.”
Capital spending varies from year to year, the first
selectman said, and often includes funding for road work, as well as equipment and vehicle purchases.
“We like to keep up with our road projects, and we always want to keep putting money away for firetrucks and public works trucks. A plow truck can run as much as $170,000. So we can put the money in fund balance, and appropriate it out of there when we need it. We’ll just have to prioritize our spending.”
This year, the town was planning to have enough capital money to buy a new firetruck. “But the one we’re hoping to replace is OK,” Valentine said. “It’s not going to stop working suddenly. If we can have town meeting in the next 3-4 months, we’ll pick these things back up.”
Unemployment claims reportedly rose to more than 500,000 in April, Valentine noted, which raises concerns about town tax revenue.
“This year’s such an uncertainty,” he said. “We need to see our tax revenue come in, and we’ve anticipated 97 percent (in tax revenue), but we don’t know what will happen. So we need to be responsible with the dollars we have.”
Cities and school districts, such as Torrington, are tracking any money they’re spending on pandemic-related expenses with the intention of requesting reimbursement from the federal government and through available grants from the state and the feds. For a small town like Goshen, that may not be as much of a concern, Valentine said.
“We’re working on FEMA reimbursement requests for out-of-theordinary things,” he said. “Staff working from home and the resources they need; cleaning supplies, things like that. But no vast sums of money are being laid out. I don’t know what federal money will trickle down to us. I’m not holding my breath . ... I’d like to get a grant to pay for those extra expenses. I don’t spend much of my time worrying about that kind of thing. We have to work with what we have.”