No tax increase: Select Board to review 2025 draft budget with option tax details

December 10, 2024  |  By Lisa Scagliotti 

Anyone interested in getting a look at the proposed 2025 municipal budget should attend or tune into tonight’s special meeting of the Waterbury Select Board at 7 p.m. 

Due to some scheduling conflicts, the board opted to meet on a Tuesday night this week and the draft 2025 budget from Municipal Manager Tom Leitz is part of the meeting materials posted with the agenda on the board’s webpage. The meeting will be in person in the Steele Community Room and streamed via Zoom online. A recording will be available afterward from Orca Media. 

The board will be reviewing the budget proposal which calls for no increase in municipal property taxes for 2025. It also includes a detailed draft proposal about how new local option tax revenue would be allocated in 2025 and several years into the future. 

New local option taxes on retail sales, rooms and meals, and alcohol sales went into effect on July 1. The taxes added 1% to those charges paid by everyone making such purchases in the community, residents and visitors alike. Local officials proposed the new levies last year as a way to augment revenue to run town government without relying solely on property taxes. Voters approved the new taxes last December and the state legislature and governor signed off on their creation this spring. 

The state collects the tax revenue and sends the town payments quarterly. So far, the town has received payment for the first quarter it was collected in 2024 – the third quarter, July through September. 

Leitz said that the first payment was $230,127, what he called “a healthy amount” of revenue. Based on statewide trends, he said third and fourth-quarter local option tax revenue tend to be the highest. He said he expects a similar amount will be collected in the final three months of the year with payment expected from the state in February. 

So far, the Select Board has approved several allocations for the 2024 local option tax revenue: $160,000 to reduce debt; $70,000 to pave a stretch of Guptil Road this fall, and $100,000 for a newly created housing trust fund. 

That leaves an estimated $120,000 of anticipated 2024 option tax revenue not dedicated to any particular expense yet. That sum is included in a proposed budget for spending local option tax funds in 2025. That will be covered in the board’s discussion of the draft 2025 budget. 

Going forward, the projection from the town manager anticipates $750,000 in local option tax funds for all of 2025. Leitz has drafted a five-year outline for allocating nearly $4 million in local option tax revenue. 

The draft 2025 list of items the new revenue could cover includes $150,000 for gravel road maintenance, $126,667 for a new fire truck, $103,000 for a new public works dump truck, and $75,000 each for the housing trust fund and new pickleball courts. Other items include planning for a new recreation facility ($60,000), repairs to the town pool ($55,000), funding for the skatepark and basketball court replacement at Hope Davey Park ($42,500), a new card security system for the municipal building ($20,000) and additional funds for the highway budget ($25,000). 

The list is part of the overall 2025 budget presentation Leitz will share. The draft proposal calls for a $6.35 million budget with only a slight increase of 0.7% in spending over 2024. Leitz’s figures show that no municipal tax increase would be necessary to fund the budget. 

The Select Board must review and discuss the budget proposal and ultimately approve the version to put to voters on Town Meeting Day in March. 

The board at tonight’s meeting also will discuss details for a public meeting in early January – so far proposed for Saturday, Jan. 11 – to share the budget details with the public and answer questions ahead of March Town Meeting. The board also will consider putting a question to voters in March on whether to alter the town’s format for approving the annual budget in future years. 

Currently, the town budget is voted on in person at the March meeting with only those present being able to participate in that vote. At town meetings in 2023 and this year, there has been discussion of moving to voting on the budget by paper ballot to increase participation. Voters already decide elections for local town and school offices by paper ballots voted all day long on Town Meeting Day. Increased participation in local elections held entirely by paper ballot during the COVID-19 pandemic sparked the discussion around modifying Waterbury’s town meeting format. 

The trade-off would be eliminating the in-person budget debate prior to the vote. That’s where the January public meeting comes in. The format is currently in place in neighboring Duxbury where voters in 2022 decided to keep the pandemic practice of voting for all business by paper ballot on Town Meeting Day. Voters there eliminated the town’s in-person March Town Meeting starting in 2023.

Duxbury has since established an early January “Have Your Say Day” Saturday public informational meeting that resembles the former March meeting. The business portion is discussion-only with voting on the town budget now part of the paper-ballot voting on Town Meeting Day. The meeting is held before the select board must approve the budget for the March vote, giving the board time to make revisions based on the public discussion.

In just two years of the new format, the January meeting has not resulted in any revisions to Duxbury’s draft budgets before the select board signed off on them for the March ballot. Similar to March Town Meeting, the Duxbury January meeting has also included visits from state representatives as they began new sessions in Montpelier, announcements and discussion of offices that need candidates for the March elections, and tables with representatives from town committees and local organizations sharing information. People also are asked to bring pies with Duxbury Historical Society members serving up coffee and cider alongside the food.

Waterbury officials say they would like to give the format a try and will nail down details at tonight’s board meeting. Also on tonight’s Select Board agenda is a discussion of creating a Natural Disaster Response Coordinator position.