A preliminary municipal budget proposed Thursday by Brunswick’s town manager could increase taxes by an estimated 3.2%.
The proposal does not yet factor in the impact of the school district and county budgets, which weren’t available Thursday, according to Town Manager John Eldridge.
If the school and county budget remained the same as last year, the overall tax rate would increase by 2.6%.
That translates to a tax rate of $21.41 per $1,000 of property valuation, up from $20.81 per $1,000 for the previous fiscal year. For a Brunswick resident with a $200,000 home, that would result in a $4,280 property tax bill, an increase of $108 over the previous fiscal year.
Brunswick’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.
The 3.2% tax increase stems from a $2.5 million proposed increase to municipal budget, $1.8 million of which would come from taxes. This increase would put the overall municipal budget at $32. 9 million.
According to Eldridge, one major driver is a $1.1 million increase in personnel and benefits, which includes approximately $527,000 for new municipal positions, such as a planner, GIS engineer, mechanic, payroll human resources employee and two new firefighters.
Other drivers include a roughly $561,000 increase in contractual costs, such as solid waste disposal and recycling, as well as a roughly $561,000 increase in debt service attributed to the new fire station.
Eldridge added that the proposal likely will change, in part due to inflation. In addition, the county budget for Brunswick will go up by approximately $50,000. Recent increases in oil prices could also bump up the budget amounts.
“The expectation right now is that we may have to increase the fuel and utility prices that we carried in the budget,” Eldridge said. “When we started, we were fairly conservative because prices were already rising, but with recent events they’re certainly rising a lot faster than they were when we looked at this a month ago.”
The largest expenses for Brunswick’s municipal budget include public safety at 37.3%, public works at 14.8%, general government at 16.6%, recreation and culture at 11.7% and debt service at 4.5%.
On Friday, Brunswick Superintendent Phil Potenziano said that the school department is still working to put together its budget proposal. At this point, what the tax rate impact might be is unclear.
For the current fiscal year, Brunswick’s combined municipal, school and county budget is about $75.7 million – about $50.6 million of which is sourced from property taxes. The school budget makes up roughly $43.6 million.
Looking ahead, the next municipal budget workshop in Brunswick will be on March 17 and the next school budget workshop will be March 16. The council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the budget May 2.
The municipal budget adoption is scheduled for May 12, and the school budget referendum would be June 14.
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