BCAT News

The Burlington Select Board voted to accept budget guidelines for Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23) that were presented to them during Monday night’s meeting by the town’s financial team.

Town Administrator Paul Sagarino said the annual budget summit with representatives from the administration, Select Board, School Committee, Ways & Means and other players was held and they arrived at an agreed-upon budget increase for FY23. Sagarino said this meeting is a helpful way to start the budget process.

“​​The budget guidelines summit is a process that was developed in town a long time ago,” he said. “In an effort to provide a comprehensive approach this meeting is held every year to get some sort of consensus among the groups on what we should spend next year. We have quite a few independently elected bodies here in town and imagine if each of them was moving forward with a different budget and different guidelines. It would be pandemonium for the Ways & Means Committee and pandemonium for Town Meeting to try and sort through all that. I think we were successful again this year.”

Town Accountant John Danizio presented the results of the summit.

He said the first thing they looked at were the property values in town. On the residential side he said the market remains strong and they expect the full valuation to continue to grow.

Burlington is a highly desirable place for people to live and the home values show that.

Danizio added that the commercial and industrial values came out better than expected and that there had been some large transactions in town.

They also looked at the goals for the FY23 budget. These included maintaining levels of services where possible, prioritizing investment in infrastructure, minimizing fees and planning for long-term liabilities.

As for how the town collects revenue, Danizio said there are three main categories – local receipts, state aid and the tax levy.

Local receipts, which include meals tax, hotel/motel tax and various permits were a mixed bag but better than expected. Danizio said that while hotels and motels are still struggling due to the pandemic they did see an increase in the meals tax and permits that outpaced projections.

“When I sat here last year I wasn’t expecting any increases for a while so this is good news,” he said. “There is reason for optimism there.”

Danzio said they expect state aid to have its normal increase but would know more concretely after the governor releases his budget later this week.

“We are estimating normal growth for FY23,” he said.

That leaves the tax levy. Danizio said that increases in other revenues will help take some of the pressure off the tax levy increase this year after all increases were covered by the levy in FY22 due to impacts of the pandemic. He said they expect a tax levy increase in the normal 4 to 5 percent range.

To get there and to meet the goals of the FY23 budget, Danizio said they are recommending an operating budget increase of 3.75 for the School Department and 3.5 for the Town.

The board voted 5-0-0 to approve the budget guidelines.