Budgets Approved at ATBM

Weston Today photos

Voters at the Annual Town Budget Meeting on April 23 approved all three budgets presented by the Board of Finance, decisively voting down motions to reduce or eliminate more than a dozen line items.

Budgets for operating the Town, school district, and capital expenditures now await the outcome of the Budget Referendum, a machine ballot vote that began last night and resumes on Saturday, May 3 from noon to 8:00 pm in the Town Hall Meeting Room.

On the ballot will be only three questions, asking if you approve, yes or no, these budget amounts:

• Town operating: $16,436,317
• Board of Education operating: $61,098,689
• Capital expenditures: $3,259,098

After years of a quorum drought, last year’s ATBM and this one drew at least twice the 130 eligible voters required by the Town Charter to be present.

First Selectwoman Samantha Nestor opened by thanking those who developed the budgets and noting they were presented with unanimous bipartisan approval from the boards of Selectmen and Finance. Moderator Susan Moch read the rules and steered discussion and debate for the next 2½ hours.

Discussion and debate

Motions were made and defeated to reduce expenditures for the Town administration, Assessor, legal counsel, and police.

Also defeated were motions that would have reduced the Public Works allocation by eliminating funds intended for preventive road maintenance and creation of a new position. The position is an employee who will perform maintenance and repairs for the Town’s seven buildings. The tree warden’s budget also survived a proposed 10 percent cut.

It took about an hour to work through the 32 lines of the $16.5 million Town budget. It took only seven minutes to discuss and debate the single-line $61 million education operating budget. A motion to cut it by $500,000 garnered little support.

All 34 capital items were approved. Motions made and defeated included reduction or elimination of allocations for installing rooftop solar panels at Lachat, replacing an aged fire truck, matching a state library grant, engineering to be eligible for state grants, replacing a boiler and pumps at Hurlbutt Elementary, and costs for an engineering design to replace the HVAC system at Hurlbutt’s North House.

What comes next

If all three budgets pass in the May 3 referendum, the Board of Finance will meet a few days later to set next year’s mill rate. As the budgets stand, the rate is estimated to rise 1.83 percent to 23.90 mills.

If a budget fails in the referendum — or, as happened last year with the capital budget, ends in a tie — the Board of Finance must vote a new proposal to put before voters in a new referendum.

Ms. Moch

Ms. Nestor

Board of Education chair Steve Ezzes, Finance Director Phillip Cross, Acting Superintendent Deborah Low, Town Clerk Donna Anastasia

In the photo at the top of the page from left to right, Ms. Moch, Town Counsel Nicholas Bamonte, assistant moderator Barbara Reynolds, Ms. Nestor, Town Administrator Karl Kilduff, Town Finance Director Rick Darling.