Voting by Australian ballot on the Sunapee town and school warrants and the election of officers will be Tuesday, March 13 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Sherburne gymnasium on Route 11.
Sunapee
The 35 articles include several zoning amendments that change definitions and update language to comply with state law and and others that request for money be placed in capital reserve funds.
Articles also ask taxpayers to approve spending for new voting booths, highway department equipment, a forestry truck for the fire department and the second of three phases of a cold storage building for the highway department.
The operating budget includes increases in general government, public safety and streets and highways totaling about $110,000 but other reductions puts the increase at $76,000, Town Manager Donna Nashawaty said.
There is just over $1 million in other requested appropriations under 23 separate articles. Of that amount, $600,000 would come from new tax dollars and the rest from other revenue including existing reserve funds and unspent fund balance as of Dec. 31.
Last year, voters defeated a petition article for a new mixed-use district on Route 11 in Georges Mills between Jobs Creek Road and Browns Hill Road. This year, the Planning Board is proposing a similar article.
“This one is slightly different than the mixed-use zone last year,” Nashawaty said.
She said the article more clearly defines the parameters of the zone and what is allowed in the district that would extend 700 feet on either side of Route 11 between the two roads.
Some of the permitted uses would include day care, boat storage, inns, residential housing, veterinarians, warehousing and auto repair shops.
“There still cannot be stores,” Nashawaty said.
The fire department article would change the organizational structure as of March 2019 with the appointment of three firewards by the Selectboard , which would then appoint a chief as well and be responsible for department policies and oversight.
The proposed school budget of $12.3 million represents an increase of a little more than 2 percent or $247,500.
Superintendent Russ Holden said the third year of a teachers contract ($150,000), increases in health insurance ($110,000), out-of-district tuition, ($44,000) and the district’s contribution to the state retirement system ($18,000) are driving most of the increase.
There also were reductions of $58,000 in special education costs including services such as occupational and speech therapy because of a shift in the special education population and $20,000 less toward technology, Holden said.
Also on the school warrant, by petition, is an advisory-only article that asks whether voters want contract negotiations between teachers and the school district to be held in public session so “both teachers and the taxpayers can observe how their interests are being represented.”
If both the town and school warrants are approved as presented, they would add an estimated 66 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation to the overall tax rate, bringing it to $16.03 and adding $165 in taxes to a property assessed at $250,000.
“That is assuming no growth (in the grand list),” Nashawaty said. “But we always have growth.”
In the only contested race for town or school positions, newcomers Jim Borelli and Michael Sisemore are running for the one-year School Board seat now held by April Royce.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
