After nearly three hours of deliberations on February 27, the Board of Finance unanimously passed both the Board of Selectmen’s, and the Board of Education’s 2019-20 budget requests to the Legislative Council.

Newtown Finance Director Robert Tait told The Newtown Bee following the meeting that the school district’s requested budget passed unanimously. The selectmen’s municipal budget request, which includes all capital bonding debt service costs for town and school projects, also passed unanimously with one amendment.

Finance board officials agreed to add $12,000 to the Board of Fire Commissioners budget to initiate a driver compensation program at the Hawleyville and Dodgingtown volunteer companies that is expected to hasten response time.

The selectmen’s request amounted to a 2.75 percent increase over the 2018-19 adopted budget and includes a $250,000 proposed increase in the Capital Roads line for continued local road improvements and maintenance.

The total proposed town-wide spend following the finance board amendment is now $42,207,726, a $1,140,759 increase over the current adopted budget. The Board of Education unanimously approved its 2019-20 budget for $78,104,410, a roughly 2.7 percent increase from the current year’s budget.

Once the spending plan moves to the Legislative Council — presumably at its regular March 6 meeting — it is split up, and various sections are reviewed by one of three council committees before those committees report to the full council and further discussion is completed.

Once the council completes and makes its final recommendations, the separate budget requests, along with any specific capital spending ballot authorizations, goes to voters for endorsement or rejection in the annual budget referendum scheduled for April 23.