#Middlebury
By MARJORIE NEEDHAM
Middlebury’s proposed 2019-2020 town budget underwent changes after a Board of Finance (BoF) member questioned an amount used in its calculations. The proposed budget approved by the BoF at its March 21 meeting is $11.2 million. In February, First Selectman Edward B. St. John presented a proposed budget of $11.4 million.
During the March 13 BoF meeting, member Stephen Ruccio questioned St. John’s use of $11,139,178 as the adopted 2018-2019 budget number when he calculated his budget. Ruccio said that is not the 2018-2019 budget approved by voters in May 2018. He asked, “Shouldn’t what we approved last year be the number used?”
He said the approved amount was $10.9 million, not $11.1 million, and St. John should have used $10.9 million in his calculations. Ruccio said the starting point for budget calculations always should be the amount voters approved.
“You have to compare apples to apples,” he said. “You can’t start with one-time charges and say that’s the starting point … You need a standardized starting point so you can see what you are voting on.”
St. John said the number he used as the starting point was the $10.9 million plus the $200,000 voters approved for upgrades to town facilities. Both were approved at the May 2, 2018 referendum.
When St. John presented his budget in February, he said it totaled $11.4 million and was an increase of $212,815, or 1.9 percent, over the current budget. Using $10.9 million as the starting point, that increase would have been $412,815, or 3.8 percent.
The budget was to be voted on at the March 13 meeting, but Chairman Bill Stowell delayed the vote until March 21 so he could get more information about a number he felt was off in one of the departments.
Chief Financial Officer Lawrence Hutvagner brought to the March 21 meeting a list of 14 line item adjustments to the proposed budget that reduced its total by just over $500,000. This changed the proposed 2019-2020 budget to $11,242,315, an increase of $303,137, or 2.8 percent, over the current budget.
While the budget number is lower than the one St. John presented in February, the increase is $90,322 higher than the February budget increase. This is because the new number was calculated using $10.9 million as the starting point.
During his February presentation, St. John started with the revised 2018-2019 budget of $12,261,178 and then deducted one-time charges of $780,000 for the purchase of Straw Pond, which was approved on the May 2, 2018 ballot, and $342,000 for fire apparatus, which was approved at a special town meeting Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019. These deductions gave him his starting point of $11,139,178. He did not explain why the $200,000 was not also backed out.
When we reviewed the budget changes with Hutvagner March 26, he said he made a mistake on the spreadsheet and should have deducted the $200,000.
