West Fairlee’s Town Meeting will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 3, in the Community Building to vote on more than a dozen warning articles. Voting by ballot to approve the operating budget and elect town officials will take place in the Community Building from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 6.
West Fairlee
The proposed budget is about $592,000, which is down $35,000 from last year’s, due in part to the face that the town has put expenses related to the Lake Fairlee Dam project behind it, Selectboard Chairwoman Delsie Hoyt said.
“I tried in the Selectboard report (included in the town’s annual report) to say enjoy it while you can,” Hoyt said.
This year, the town will be conducting an inventory of its roads to see what it needs to do to comply with new state water quality regulations that require municipalities to prevent runoff from roads from entering waterways, Hoyt said.
“This may be a short-lived little respite,” she said. “We couldn’t budget for those unknowns this year.”
In addition to the savings from the dam project’s completion, Hoyt said the town has realized cost savings from energy efficiency projects on its Community Building, and it has done well to set aside money in capital reserve funds in order to cover unexpected costs such as the installation of a new back-up water purification system for the Community Building.
Other appropriations, which will be voted on from the floor at Town Meeting, include increases requested by Upper Valley Ambulance, up about $4,000 from last year to $28,000, and the West Fairlee Fire Department, up $5,000 to $55,000.
In total, voters will be asked to approve about $95,000 in the so-called outside appropriations.
Even factoring in those increases, however, Hoyt said taxpayers could expect to see a reduction in the tax rate from the current year’s.
The current rate is 83 cents per $100 of assessed value, and she estimated the rate would drop to 79 cents per $100 of value, or a municipal tax bill of $1,975 on a $250,000 home.
“Anytime you can make a little bit of an adjustment, it’s a good thing,” she said.
There are no contested races in West Fairlee this year, Town Clerk Staci Sargent said in an email.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
