The Board of Selectmen Tuesday night approved sending the town manager’s $8.1 million budget to voters later this year.
The $8,125,086 municipal budget is a 4.8% increase, or $375,167, over last year’s $7.7 million budget.
The majority of the increases across the board in Town Manager Bob Peabody’s proposal, and especially for the assessing, code enforcement, community development and recreation departments, come from salary and employee benefit increases.
The $995,063 police department budget is a 15.3% increase over last year’s budget and includes salary increases and the addition of a new patrolman, which accounts for $70,519 of the $131,855 boost. The addition of $55,661 to the department’s equipment and capital budget is for the purchase of a new cruiser, two mobile radios and six portable radios, for a total of $67,641.
The fire department’s budget is cut by 9.4%, or $25,879 for a total of $347,799. There is a 20% decrease for the supplies and maintenance budgets. The latter is a return to the 2019-2020 budget’s numbers; the 2020-2021 budget included vehicle and building repair expenses.
An additional $15,504 will go toward the Town Hall budget, an 84% increase over last year’s $18,456 budget. About $4,000 of that will go towards cleaning supplies, $10,000 for building repairs and the remainder toward miscellaneous items.
The proposal also includes allocations of $755,493 for the county budget and $10,121,096 allocation for Lake Region School District, both of which are just over a 2% increase. The combined municipal, county and school budget is $19,001,675, a 3.3% increase from last year’s.
The proposal did not include a projected property tax rate. The 2020-2021 tax rate is $15 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The municipal tax rate alone is $6.24. The owner of a $250,000 home in Bridgton paid $1,560 in municipal taxes this year and $3,750 in property taxes overall.
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