Hampden council to review $6.2M budget

HAMPDEN – Town councilors will have one last crack at the budget during Monday’s regular council meeting before sending it to public hearing later this month.

As part of the final budget session, councilors will review the proposed $6.2 million budget. If it passes as written at a public hearing on June 19, the municipal budget would represent a 7.5 percent increase over last year.

Overall, the proposed budget maintains current operations, and much of the increase can be attributed to higher fuel and energy costs, Town Manager Susan Lessard said Friday.

“It’s not just to keep a public works truck running; it’s to heat buildings,” she said.

The amount to be raised through taxation, including the SAD 22 and county taxes, is about $8 million, up nearly 11 percent over last year. Despite the jump, town officials hope to keep the mill rate steady at $16.70 per $1,000 of valuation, Lessard said. The town’s valuation for 2006 is up $78 million over last year, due primarily to new construction.

Hampden’s growing population led town officials to budget additional money for public safety services, Lessard said. The police budget includes a $40,000 increase to fund, along with pay raises, salaries for part-time reserve officers, Lessard said. The reserves would supplement existing officers in order to have two officers working each shift around the clock, she said.

A $61,000 increase is planned for the Fire Department budget to fund pay raises and another firefighter-paramedic position, Lessard said. The added position will improve service to Hampden residents, she said.

“Our population’s growing,” the town manager said. “We have more subdivisions, more everything.”

Another significant change is the creation of a communications budget, which includes cable television service and the town’s newsletter and Web site. The items related to cable television would be funded through fees from the town’s agreement with Adelphia, Lessard said.

Remaining unchanged in the proposed budget is the amount the town plans to dedicate from its host community agreement with Pine Tree Landfill to fund reserves. Despite the landfill’s uncertain future, $160,000 would again be set aside.

Pine Tree officials predict the landfill will be full by September 2007 and have not announced any other plans since withdrawing their public benefit application in March. The application was a precursor to a proposal to boost the 6 million-cubic-yard landfill’s capacity by nearly 50 percent.

The fiscal year ends in June 2007, so it won’t be until the 2007-08 budget year that councilors will have to decide how the loss of host community funds would affect the budget, Lessard said.

Regardless, councilors have always used the money to fund reserves, not for the town’s operating budget, she said.

“They didn’t want it to be used for the operating budget monies because they didn’t want to create a dependency on that money,” Lessard said.