BY RYAN O’CONNOR
At Town Meeting on Wednesday, May 9, one of the issues drawing public interest is a petitioned warrant article urging selectmen to move forward with a multimillion dollar water and sewer project for Route 3A, which was supported by residents at the 2002 Town Meeting.
According to resident Stephen Buckley, who formed and submitted the petition, the time is now to take a proactive stance toward attracting business to Bow.
Installing a $12.5 million water and sewer system along the town’s eastern commercial and industrial district, he said, will go a long way toward accomplishing the goal.
“The longer we wait, the more it’s going to cost,” said Buckley. “It’s already been approved at (2002) Town Meeting, so there is no reason to stall any longer. It’s really time to get moving.”
Selectmen will also present an $8,187,873 municipal operating budget to voters, which represents an 11.4 percent, or $840,322, increase over last year’s budget of $7,347,551.
In addition to rising health care costs and standard increases in town employees salaries, Town Manager James Pitts said new police and fire department positions in last year’s budget weren’t funded for full-year salaries and this year, the town will realize the burden of paying for those positions for an entire fiscal year.
Though he said selectmen would have liked to present a smaller budget increase, Pitts noted the municipal budget represents only 20 percent of the total tax base.
In addition, there is no default budget should the municipal operating budget be rejected.
“If the operating budget were voted down, come July 1, we would have no money to run the town whatsoever,” said Pitts. “If we were still on the calendar fiscal year, we would have no money the very next day, but with the additional time before the new calendar year, we would have to call an emergency Town Meeting, which of course would only generate additional expense.”
Other warrant articles include $25,000 for the architectural concept design of a new public safety building to house the police and fire department and $163,800 for the reconstruction of the Bow Bog Road/Bow Center Road intersection, from which $111,935 will come from the state.
Selectmen will also ask residents to approve allocations to several capital reserve funds for various town departments.
Should all warrant articles be approved, the total appropriation will present a $1.3 million decrease from $10.4 million last year to $9.1 million this year.
Pitts said a large reason for the decrease in total financial appropriation is this year’s warrant doesn’t include the $955,000 article to purchase Paul Hammond’s property off Dunbarton Center Road.
Because the land purchase was bonded, there was little immediate tax impact.
The land purchase aside, selectmen were still able to trim more than $334,000 in additional warrant costs.
“Selectmen were aware that the budget would have to go up and worked hard to take money out of the warrant articles,” said Pitts.
Because of Bow’s current revaluation, Pitts said it is too early to venture an estimate as to the potential tax increase without a total assessed value of the town.