Annual Budget Meeting Set for Tonight

The town’s annual budget meeting will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday May 26 at the Canton High School auditorium.

Representatives from the boards of finance, selectmen and education will be on hand to hear comments and answer questions and the meeting will adjourn to referendum June 8.

The proposed 2011-12 spending plan is $34,015,978 — a 0.9 percent increase of $313,504 over current budget.

If approved, it would result in a 0.73 percent tax increase of 0.19 mills, bringing the mill rate to 26.28.

A homeowner with a market value of $361,429 and an assessed value of $253,000 would pay an extra $48 in taxes.

The Board of Finance set the budget levels at a workshop earlier this month. It limited the selectmen’s and education budgets to 1.5 percent increases. That resulted in a proposal that is $93,000 less than the Board of Selectmen requested and $286,000 less than the Board of Education sought.

This week First Selectman Richard Barlow and Board of Education Chairman Beth Kandrysawtz urged people to support the budgets since a no vote typically means more cuts.

“I do hope people come out and support the budget,” Barlow said.

“Getting the budget passed at referendum is very important,” Kandrysawtz said.

Board of Finance Chairman Richard Ohanesian agreed that a no vote is generally a call to reduce the budget.

“If a budget fails it will typically lead to further reductions,” he said.

Ohanesian said he could see the possibility for an advisory question at a budget vote but said the public has ample opportunity to speak during the process, which really begins in November and includes multiple hearings and meetings.

“There’s ample opportunity for the public to make their comments.” He said.

Ohanesian does hope people come to the budget meeting Thursday or at least take the effort to look more closely at the plan.

He feels the adjournment to referendum can result in people being even less informed since they know no action will take place at the budget meeting and are even less likely to attend.

“It’s essentially reduced to something that’s irrelevant,” he said. “The biggest problem is we will get a large number of people casting a ballot and not looking at the budget in any detail at all.”

Selectman David W. Gilchrist, one of three people who collected signatures to petition the budget to referendum, sees it differently.

He agrees fewer people go the budget meeting but feels voters do education themselves. He also believes many can’t stay at a long budget meeting to vote.

“I think the voting at town meeting disenfranchises a lot of people,” he said.

Gilchrist does not always circulate budget petitions, especially if increases are small, but also did have another motivating factor this year since a few proposed charter changes will be included on the ballot. Read about those here. The town needs 15 percent of the qualified voters to affirm those proposed changes for them to become effective. As of Wednesday that would be 1,007 votes since there were 6,713 qualified voters.

See more details about the budget hearing and referendum here.