Budget Hearing Draws Few Residents

The East Greenwich town charter dictates a public hearing be held by April 15 on the budget for the next fiscal year. Someone forgot to tell the residents to care.

After counting up town and school elected officials and employees, a few advocates for specific programs and the press, there was only a handful of residents in attendence for Thursday night's required budget hearing. None of them asked questions.

"It's very disappointing," said one resident who asked not to be identified. He'd come to hear about the financial picture for next year. While he had questions, it was early in the process, he said.

The $50.5 million budget presented Thursday reflects an tax rate increase of 2.8 percent over 2012. At last year's valuation, that would be a tax rate of $17.99 per $1,000 of assessed value. On a house assessed at $400,000, that works out to a tax bill of $7,196.

Here's where it gets tricky, however, since the town has undergone a reassessment of property values which will be reflected in next year's tax bill. Property owners received their new assesment in February, but hearings for those with complaints on their value assessment have only just been completed. The final assessments are due out in about 10 days, Town Manager Bill Sequino said Thursday.

Sequino has said he expects confusion while people work to reconcile the new tax rate. The bottom line, he said, is this: "We won't collect any more dollars [with the new rate] than we would with a $17.99 tax rate."

The schools portion of the budget is $31 million, an increase of 1.55 percent. That's a cut of about $400,000 from the budget presented by the School Committee. Sequino argued in an interview Thursday morning that because the School Department's budget surplus (fund balance) was more than $800,000 in 2011, and upwards of $400,000 the year before, their budget can absorb the cut outlined in his budget.

"It's not a bad reduction," said Sequino Thursday morning. "To say they're not going to generate any surplus [in 2013] would be to say they are going to spend 98.8 percent of their budget. That's not going to happen. That's why I don't think the reduction is that severe."

At Thursday night's budget hearing, no one challenged the budgets as presented. That, most likely, will come in the weeks ahead.