Councilors have increased the 2007 proposed budget by $12,840, allocating money for mosquito testing and new town voting booths.

The proposed operating budget that will be brought to Town Meeting on Tuesday, March 7, is $23,002,751, said Crystal Dionne, director of finance.

The proposed budget carries an estimated tax increase of 80 cents on the town side. The estimated tax rate is $3.65 per $1,000 assessed property value.

For a $300,000 home, the town taxes would be $1,095.

The second hearing for the 2007 town operating budget on Feb. 15 garnered much more discussion from residents than the first hearing, with much of it coming from Roy Stewart, president of the Bedford Taxpayers Association. Stewart said he is worried about raising town taxes in a year that school taxes are expected to jump because of the new school complex.

Stewart said he added all the capital reserve money in several different departments in the budget, and it totaled $566,000.

“It’s a lot of dough to be putting into reserve in a year that we’ve got a crunch in the school system on the other side of the aisle, and I’m just wondering if there’s some way we can’t take a little bit of the reserve out,” he said.

The two additions at the Feb. 15 hearing were $6,000 for testing mosquitos for Eastern equine encephalitis, or EEE, and $6,480 for 40 new voting booths.

During the hearing, resident Marilyn Brock asked the council to add the $6,000 for mosquito testing to the fire department’s health department budget.

“The $6,000 that Marilyn is speaking to is for what the health department refers to as surveillance, which is basically testing high risk areas for the presence of mosquitos that carry either EEE or West Nile Virus,” said Paul Brock.

Before leaving his post in November, former Town Manager Keith Hickey had recommended the $6,000. The allocation was removed from the budget, but it equals only one-500th of a cent increase to the tax rate, said Paul Brock.

The state conducts tests in Bedford, but this would expand that testing, rather than duplicating it, said Councilor Andy Egan, who motioned to add the $6,000 to the budget.

“Whatever the statistical chance might be that we might save a child’s life, there is no argument,” he said.

The motion to add $6,480 for elections and registrations came from Councilor Norm Longval.

He said the New Hampshire presidential primary could be held as early as December 2007.

“We’re planning on increasing the registration from 10 to 20 tables. That’s to minimize the bottleneck at the registration desk,” Longval said. “Because we only have 130 booths that the town is utilizing, if we don’t increase this number you’re going to have a bottleneck that’s going to be created after they register.”

Councilor Paul Roy said the money could come from the unallocated reserve, instead of increasing the amount for elections.

This wouldn’t have an effect on the budget, he said.

“It certainly makes sense to do it, but I think it would be best to be taken out of unallocated reserve after the budget is approved,” said Town Manager Russ Marcoux.

Chairman Bill Van Anglen disagreed.

“I just like to define the budget for the costs we know we’re going to have, versus taking it out of something for a ‘what if.’ If we know we have the expense, we should budget for it,” he said.