The Borough of Newtown’s Board of Burgesses has approved raising its mill rate to .76 mills, a .12 mill or 18.7% increase over the current rate of .64 mills.

A mill represents one dollar for every $1,000 in taxable property.

At its April 12 meeting, the board approved a $224,820 proposed budget, an $8,100 or 3.7% increase over the 2021-22 proposed budget of $216,720.

Warden Joseph ‘Jay’ Maher noted that pre-revaluation, the Borough’s mill rate had been .85 in 2015-16, .86 in 2016-17, .85 in 2017-18, and .95 in 2018-19, before being reduced to .67 in 2019-20. The mill rate was .66 in 2020-21.

“The mill rate was usually around 0.9,” said Burgess James Gaston. “It’s kind of at an all-time low.”

Gaston said that the mill rate had been reduced in 2019-20 because the borough had extra money from building projects, and decided to give some of that money back to the taxpayers through a lower mill rate. However, that was “always meant to be temporary.”

With the borough’s fund balance declining to one-and-a-half times the normal budget, the board is looking to phase out use of fund balance money to keep the mill rate lower. The borough had been using $40,000 per year from the fund balance; however, this year it has lowered that amount to $25,000. Next year, the amount used for the budget from the fund balance will be $15,000; and the following year, 2024-25, using money from the fund balance for the regular budget will be completely phased out.

Burgess William Lucas said that the board has been “kicking the can down the street” with regards to raising the mill rate and no longer using the fund balance to balance the annual budgets, and that it was “running out of times we’re able to do it.”

The borough’s policy is that unassigned fund balance be held at no less than one-and-a-half times the budget, so roughly $330,000, plus money held in accounts for sidewalk installation of $150,000; $30,000 for tree maintenance, $40,000 for legal expenditures, and $15,000 for the historic district; for a total of $565,000. The current fund balance is $622,000, and will be $597,000 if the current budget is approved by using $25,000 of it to offset the mill rate.

The 2022-23 proposed budget has a number of increases from last year. Some of the most notable were a $1,000 increase for fire hydrants, from $69,000 to $70,000; a $1,000 increase for clerk salary, from $5,000 to $6,000; a $1,000 increase for tax collector salary, from $7,500 to $8,500; a $500 increase for treasurer salary, from $5,000 to $5,500; a $2,500 increase for building clerk salary, from $2,000 to $4,500; and a $5,500 increase for zoning officer salary, from $8,000 to $13,500.

At a previous board meeting, Senior Burgess Chris Gardner noted the borough’s employees were “grossly underpaid.”

A number of reductions were made to the budget to help reduce the overall tax increase; the most notable were a $2,500 decrease in the legal fees line item, from $15,000 to $12,500; a $3,000 decrease for street lights, from $27,000 to $25,000; and a $1,500 decrease for tree maintenance, from $3,000 to $1,500.

The borough budget referendum — not to be confused with this Tuesday’s Newtown budget vote — will be held May 10.

Associate Editor Jim Taylor can be reached at jim@thebee.com.