POMFRET
Town Meeting is Tues., March 1 at 9 a.m. (Floor Vote) Pomfret Town Hall
One year into the creation of the Prosper Valley School, officials say there are no regrets so far. “I think it’s a great first step and illustration of success you can have,” said chair Greg Greene. “To say it’s a complete solution is incorrect.”
The school is asking Pomfret for $848,342 of a $1,540,907 budget it splits with Bridgewater. The budget will go before voters at 1 p.m. in Town Hall, after lunch and after Town Meeting, which is scheduled for 9 a.m.
Pomfret’s appropriation is down from last year’s $862,647, yet the tax rate for the school, $1.40, is up from $1.36, increasing the tax bill $80 for an owner of a $200,000 property.
The school is proposing to spend $12,214 per equalized pupil, which is 13.7 percent higher than spending for the current year.
The increased tax rate is “primarily from a drop in equalized pupil,” Windsor Central Supervisory Union Director of Finance and Operations Richard Seaman said.
The costs of running the school are also higher due to an increase in teacher salaries.
“The teachers were brought in line with the rest of the district. They were paid significantly below district scale and they were brought up over a two-year period,” Greene said.
Prosper Valley School is the joint school between Pomfret and Bridgewater that both towns approved the creation of at last year’s Town Meeting. The vote on the budget will be by Australian ballot and residents in both towns must accept it for it to pass.
This past year, the kitchen at Prosper Valley School was renovated, an $89,000 expense that was offset with $77,000 in grants. Another $13,000 in grant money has been verbally awarded.
“One year in…they did a really careful job on their budget,” Seaman said.
The town expense budget of $961,806 is up about $30,000 from what voters approved last year.
The estimated 39 cent tax rate is about a penny more than the previous year.
The owner of a $200,000 home would pay $780 in property taxes — $20 more than last year.
Coming off a Town Meeting where the proposed town budget unanimously failed causing the select board to make a rare scramble to recalculate numbers and call a special Town Meeting last June, the board is more confident in this year’s budget.
“The issues last year were a unique item and we’re considerably further along in the accounting system,” chair Phil Dechert said.
The town now employs Chad Hewitt, an accountant who specializes in municipal finances, as needed.
“We managed to hold the expenses pretty much in line,” Dechert said.
Pomfret residents will also vote whether to create a committee to look at capital expenditures through fiscal year 2024 and whether to increase the select board from three members to five.
— Katy Savage
This article first appeared in the February 25, 2016 edition of the Vermont Standard.