After the public budget hearing and Board of Finance (BOF) meeting, the Board of Selectmen (BOS) was tasked with cutting $300,000 from its budget – though it was suggested that they look to ARPA to help make some of that up. So, on Thursday, March 28, the ARPA committee convened to figure out how much money was still available.
Board of Selectman Bill Morrison said the plan was to take $100,000 from building projects, and $200,000 from the requested paving budget. That would bring the total paving budget down to $800,000, instead of the requested $1 million. It should be noted that $800,000 is a substantial increase from the $150,000 allocated for funding this year.
The board spent over an hour combing through remaining funds from finished projects, finding alternate funding sources for other projects, and generally looking for as much money as possible to put toward paving.
Chair of the ARPA committee and Selectman Rick Hartenstein suggested using the $15,000 still slated for Haymarket Common furniture for paving, but other board members felt the economic development benefit of continuing to improve the downtown area was important. Town Clerk Karen Troiano, also a committee member, suggested the money set aside to buy freezers for SafeNet could be used for paving, and instead, the town could fund the freezers through a food bank fund that can be used for any food-related town needs. Hartenstein also said there was another $35,000 bound for projects at Woodland Springs, but the housing authority ultimately decided they did not want/need the money. That money was returned to the unallocated funds.
Ultimately, the commission came up with $170,000 of the $200,000 they were looking for and voted to allocate it to paving. Additionally, the ARPA funds have to be allocated by the end of 2024. So if projects that are currently underway have funds left over at the end, the board said they would also put that toward paving, but they won’t know what that dollar amount is until the end of the year.
So, if the current proposed budget passes at referendum, and ARPA kicks in another $170,000 for paving, there will be $970,000 put toward paving – just $30,000 shy of the original goal.