West Hartford’s total proposed General Fund budget for next fiscal year is $259.4 million.

West Hartford Town Hall. Photo credit: Ronni Newton

By Ronni Newton

West Hartford’s proposed budget for 2015-2016 was presented to the Town Council Tuesday night, with a requested increase of $8.2 million, or 3.25 percent, more than the current year’s budget of $251.3 million.

Town Manager Ron Van Winkle said he had already “taken a lot of requests out” of the budget that Director of Financial Services Peter Privitera, the town’s CFO, outlined to council members.

A large percentage of the overall budget – 57 percent – is impacted by the Board of Education’s proposed $148.6 million budget unveiled by Superintendent Tom Moore last week. Six percent ($16.3 million) of the town’s budget is for capital expenditures and the remaining 37 percent ($94.5 million) are municipal expenses.

The overall $8.2 million increase is almost evenly spread between those three areas, according to Privitera’s presentation.

While wage and salary increases are minimal ($0.219 million), operating expenses such as utilities, contractual agreements for waste removal/disposal, and supplies have a proposed increase of $0.741 million. The MDC’s “Ad Valorem” tax, which charges the town based on the value of real property, is $0.474 million, accounting for 64 percent of the increase in operating expenses.

The real budget-busters, however, are benefits and health insurance as well as capital financing costs.

“This is always the tough one,” Privitera said as he outlined a $2 million, 6.5 percent budgeted increase in the cost of benefits and insurance for the next fiscal year.

Unlike in some past years pension contributions will increase only 0.5 percent, and risk management programs targeting heart health and hypertension have had a positive impact, but the cost of the town’s health insurance, including contributions to the health care reserve fund, have a 13 percent increase.

The town is currently in negotiation with eight different unions, Privitera said, and a contingency reserve fund has been established to allow for wage settlements. He hopes that negotiations will eventually yield significantly reduced health and benefits costs in the future.

Capital financing costs for 2015-2016 are estimated to increase by $2.5 million or 18.4 percent. Much of that is for debt service ($1.8 million) on the town’s general obligation bonds, including bonds for the construction of the new Charter Oak International Academy building. The remainder is for capital non-recurring expenditures of $0.715 million.

“How are we going to finance all of these expenditures?” Privitera asked as he continued his presentation.

As is the case with most communities in the state, the majority of revenue comes from property taxes. In West Hartford, that’s where 87 percent of the money comes from.

Other revenue sources include state aid grants, conveyance taxes, and building permits. Intergovernmental revenue, which includes state aid as well as miscellaneous grants, is budgeted to decline by $355,000 based on the state budget proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

The slight Grand List growth of .31 percent will generate $718,374 new revenue, providing a small boost to partially offset the impact on individual taxpayers, but in order to fund the proposed budget taxes will have to be increased to bring in $7.6 million addition revenue. The current mill rate of 37.37 would increase to 38.67 for 2015-2016 under the proposed budget.

For the “average” West Hartford homeowner, who owns a home valued at $319,000, assessed at $223,000 (70 percent of market value), that translates into $289 more in taxes, or a 3.5 percent increase for those households.

The current 2014-2015 budget adopted by the Town Council in April 2014 included an increase of $9.3 million, or 3.8 percent, over the past year.

Council members will spend the next several weeks reviewing the budget department-by-department. Public hearings are scheduled for Thursday, March 26 at 2 p.m., and Wednesday, April 1, at 6:30 p.m., in Town Hall Room 314.

The Town Council is scheduled to adopt its budget on Monday, April 20.

Budget documents will be available on the Town of West Hartford website.

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