By Brandon T. Bisceglia
Orange’s Board of Finance held its annual budget hearing on April 20 at High Plains Community Center to lay out the details of a budget that is expected to reduce the tax rate for residents by 1.2 percent.
Members of the Board of Finance presented the overall numbers, as well detail on the town side of the budget. The superintendents of Orange Public Schools and the Amity Regional School District also presented their individual sections of the budget.
“The budget before you this evening was a 6-0 vote from our board,” said BOF chair Kevin Houlihan as he opened the meeting, stressing its unanimous, bipartisan support. “That’s very important.”
If the budget as drafted is passed, the current 32.71 mill rate will drop to 32.31 mills.
The $80,249,651 proposal is an increase by just under $2 million from last year. However, that increase was offset by growth in the town’s grand list from the previous year by $63.74 million, or 2.83 percent.
The largest percentage increase in the grand list came from business personal property tax revenues, which rose by more than $33 million from the prior year. That was driven largely by utility company United Illuminating, which has its headquarters in Orange.
“Mark Branchesi, our tax assessor, said to me this was a strong grand list improvement, and it was led by UI’s business personal property,” said BOF Vice Chair Jim Leahy. UI is also Orange’s largest taxpayer, followed by Southern Connecticut Gas.
As is the case with most Connecticut municipalities, the largest share of Orange’s revenue – 92.3 percent – comes from property taxes.
Although the grand list growth is allowing for a tax decrease, spending overall will go up in most areas. The town side of the budget contains a 5.5 percent increase, along with a 5.18 percent increase in debt service and capital costs. The Orange Public Schools budget will increase by 3.37 percent.
The Amity budget would increase as well, by 2.25 percent. However, the three member towns split Amity funding proportionally based on student enrollment, which went down for Orange this year. That means taxpayers will see a 1 percent decrease in their portion of the payment for Amity.
When it was his turn to present the Orange Public Schools budget, Superintendent Dr. Vince Scarpetti opened with a reminder that the years of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic were still very much lingering in the school system.
“It’s great to be back, and great to be in school, and the way I think we should be,” he said, but added, “these are some of the impacts that you’ll see in our budget.”
Major drivers of the public schools budget included salaries, support staff and technology. The schools also had to pay more for gasoline and utilities.
Some costs did go down, including for special education and health insurance.
Scarpetti singled out increases that came from paying for security officers in the schools, an initiative that has been in the works over the last few years.
“Quite frankly, whenever there was a shooting, there were calls immediately: ‘Are there police present at the school?’” he said.
Amity Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Byars echoed Scarpetti in many of the cost drivers for her district, with salaries, services and technology among the top items.
Byars shared a slide that compared year-by-year budget increase requests with contractual cost increases, pointing out that any time the budget side dipped below the contractual increase, it meant that the school system was making reductions in other areas. She noted that such was the case this year.
“This year it’s particularly remarkable that we were able to do that given the inflation that we’re seeing in our commodities and our utilities,” she said.
The three-town vote for the Amity budget occurred on May 2; vote totals were not available as of press time. The referendum on the Orange town and Orange Public Schools budgets will take place on May 17.
During public comment, Selectman Mitch Goldblatt spoke in favor of increasing funding for road paving, and addressed what he considered an unnecessarily acrimonious attitude toward Amity by some Board of Finance members.
“I hope that you will take into consideration my requests for the town budget, but in any case, I will support it and ask others to do so, because it is a reasonable and responsible budget that recognizes the needs of our community,” he said.