Mayor's Proposed Budget Would Necessitate Tax Increase

Reported and written by Ellyn Santiago.

If Montville Mayor Ron McDaniel’s $55,958,148 budget proposal is approved, property taxes will increase, albeit not by much.

The new spending plan represents a 0.61 percent increase over the current $55.62 million budget.  

At Monday’s Montville Town Council meeting McDaniel presented his 2013-2014 proposed budget which includes the general government, board of education 2013-2014 spending plan and the town’s capital improvement plan.  

If the budget is approved in May, the tax rate would increase from 29.33 mills to 29.50, an increase of 0.17 mills.  

“This budget was possible because the Board of Education came in at zero,” McDaniel told the council adding that as schools budgets have seen annual increases, “general government has continued to struggle.”  

“But we used nothing from reserves for this budget.” He said a “hard look’ was taken at each department budget request.  

Save for Town Councilor Rosetta Jones who said she’d prefer to see no increase and Councilor Dana McFee who said he wouldn’t “cry about” the very small increase, councilors were largely silent about the budget and no member of the public commented.  

The school portion of the budget is $36,632,735, which represents a zero increase over last year and the capital improvement budget of $1.3 million. The latter includes $500,000 for road paving, $70,000 for two police cruisers, $200,000 for fire vehicle replacement and Town Hall roof repair for $35,000.  

The Town Council Special Budget meeting is slated for May 13 at 6 p.m. to see the budget approved.