This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

New Budget Increases Town Maintenance Spending

First Selectman Jim Zeoli said the recovering economy has given the town some help paying for long-deferred repairs to streets, sidewalks and buildings.

Referendum voters passed the proposed Orange town budget by a 2-to-1 margin Thursday, although only about 4 percent of the town’s 10,106 eligible voters cast ballots.

That is still a welcome decision for First Selectman Jim Zeoli, who said the budget contains much needed maintenance and repair projects that the town has put off for several years hoping to see the economy improve.

The economy is better, in fact. Zeoli said the commercial and residential vacancy rates are much lower than they were. But he noted the improvement has only recovered fiscal ground that was lost during the recession, and that made many of the budget decisions more difficult this year.

Find out what's happening in Orangewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"It’s very challenging to make some of these purchases. We’ve held back as long as possible," he said.

Zeoli said this year he felt the town government couldn’t afford to put off maintenance and repair work any longer. The town has been waiting to fix sidewalks, building repairs, painting work and other small projects, so that the school budgets could continue to get increases.

Find out what's happening in Orangewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Later this year, he said the town would have to make a bond sale to borrow money for two school roof replacements, a major drainage project, road repairs and some large equipment purchases for the transfer station and the park department.

Although the budget was approved, Zeoli was disappointed in the turnout, which he said didn’t seem to justify the expense of having the polling place at the High Plains Community Center open and staffed from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

He said he thought the town should consider changing back to the old town meeting system, in which the budget would be approved by a yea or nay vote.

Budget Details

The new $59,242,951 budget is $2,755,956 more than the current, 2011-12 budget, a spending increase of 4.88 percent. But Board of Finance Vice Chairman Jim Leahy said a 1.53 percent increase in the Grand List meant taxes would only rise 3.31 percent.

The one mill increase, to 31.2 mills, translates into a $249 increase for the average residential taxpayer.

Leahy said of the three components of the budget, town departments received the largest increase this year — a 9.66 percent hike of $1,827, 014. The Orange Public Schools, which are the K-6 grades, received a 1.05 percent increase amounting to $184,878, and the Amity Regional Schools, grades 7-12, received a 3.73 percent increase of $743,274.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?