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Volume 22, Number 27
Town looks at options for anticipated $2.8M surplus By Devin Leith-Yessian The Citizen
The town is starting the fiscal year with an anticipated $2.8 million surplus left over from the last fiscal year’s budget.
Affordable housing plan encounters opposition By Devin Leith-Yessian The Citizen
Finance Director Kevin Delaney credited multiple departments with finding creative methods to increase revenue, while noting the bulk of the expected surplus Board of Finance Chairperson Sam Lomaglio. File photo was accumulated through one-time Mark Holmes are pushing achieved by Treasurer Nansources, like state grants for the remainder be used to cy Lockwood moving town and back tax collections. purchase a new scoreboard funds to bank accounts with He cautioned that the for Sage Park at a cost of higher interest rates. exact amount of the sur- around $200,000. "To give you some perspecplus will not be preciseDelaney credited the town tive, we started out the fiscal ly known until the year between 0.4 and 0.6 town’s audit is complete Revenue Collector’s Office for continuing a years-long percent for most of our bank in October. effort to eat away at unpaid accounts, in terms of an inA set of proposals Detaxes. A third of the $3 milterest rate – annual interest laney gave to the Board lion in back taxes was colrate. We finished the year of Finance earlier this lected. The town’s tax coljust over 2.4 percent," Demonth calls for more lection rate increased to 99.7 laney said. than $2 million to be percent, up from the 99.1 The town also received $1.8 used to pay down debt. percent. million more than budgeted Board of Finance Chair- An additional $700,000 in through the state education person Sam Lomaglio increased revenue was cost sharing grant. and board member The largest debt payment Delaney is lobbying to make with the surplus is reallocating $1.4 million towards the pension fund. The current amount dedicated to pensions is $190,565, enough to cover the expected annuities this year.
Finance Director Kevin Delaney.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
File photo
Delaney would also like to see $444,000 spent to pay off short-term bond anticipation notes before they are converted to long-term debt, which would save the town at least $15,000 in fees to issue general obligation bonds.
The Planning and Zoning Commission has asked town staff to draft a motion to reject a zoning amendment that would create a new affordable housing zone near the Middletown line. The move is in response to a plan to build 11 multistory buildings with 319 rental units. Thirty percent would be set aside as affordable, under the plan. “I think I can speak for everybody on this commission … it's not the fact that it's affordable housing that's the problem. It's the density, the scale, the scope of the project,” said PZC Vice Chairperson Diane Jorsey during the commission’s Aug. 22 meeting. Rio Vista Associates LLC, submitted the text amendment and a related map amendment to create the af-
fordable residential planned development overlay zone and have it applied to 19 acres of property it owns along Atkins Street. William Krame, principal for the LLC, declined to comment for this story. Safety concerns cited by the commission centered around the ability of Atkins Street to handle the increased traffic. "With respect even to the road safety, the road widths and the proposal in the text amendment allow for a building to be 20 feet off the street with no sidewalks on a narrow roadway that two cars have a hard enough time passing to begin with ... to me it is outrageous to think that the applicant thinks that that's a reasonable proposal," Jorsey said. On the advice of legal counsel, commissioners asked for the drafting of a written moSee Housing, A14
A public hearing on the development of a 300-plus unit apartment complex on Atkins Street in Berlin. Devin Leith-Yessian, The Citizen