The Mayor's budget does NOT include overtime costs for the town services; next move is the Town Council's

I called Police Chief William Wright this morning to simply confirm what I had suspected (as it's been par for the course since 2010) - the Police Department did not add consideration to their overtime budget request to take into account the costs of the services for the fireworks and the Wallingford Independence Day celebration. I did not call the other departments (Fire, Public Works, etc.) because it is unlikely they broke from recent procedure either.

With that, and due to the fact that Mayor Dickinson also did not add funding to those line items (overtime), there is no money allocated to the department budgets for the service costs for the event.

The approximate burden in total from all departments is $14,000. Based on the prior mill rate and property tax figures that is approximately a .35% increase charge per property owner.

The cost of that is SEVENTY CENTS on the median valued residential property owner. That is the amount of taxes that are being saved by not affording this cost for the event. 

One mill raises about four million dollars. That burden to the median valued residential property owner (a home appraised at about $290,000 and assessed at 70% of that or about $200,000 for the purposes of taxes) is $200 in increased taxes.
If taxes needed to be raised to fund the $14,000 (and they don't - we returned $760,000 to the general fund from last year; taxes charged to all property owners but went unspent) but if they HAD to be so as to NOT going into our TWENTY MILLION DOLLAR SAVINGS ACCOUNT (made up of your unspent taxes from years of over taxation) then it would be a SEVENTY CENT BURDEN to have the event for the median valued residential property owner. 

From here, pretty much the last step that can be practically taken is for the Town Council, when discussing those department budgets either add the amounts needed to the overtime line items OR to place another department to be responsible for those costs and to increase their budget to that accordingly.

The next move is the Town Council's.

If no action is taken, there will be no show on the west side of town, on the grounds of the schools for 2015, regardless of whether The Fund raises the $16,500 for the fireworks (the aerial pyrotechnics) or not.