State Aid Boost Doesn’t Change Outlook for Lyme, Old Lyme Taxpayers

LYME/OLD LYME, CT – Local finance board leaders this week said an infusion of municipal aid from the state, amounting to less than $80,000 in Old Lyme and $21,000 in Lyme, is not enough to move the needle on tax bills in Lyme and Old Lyme. 

Gov. Ned Lamont early this week released town-by-town totals from the state legislature’s $28.1 billion state budget, which was passed on May 2 with $272.9 million in additional aid for cities and towns. 

The supplemental funding ranged from $8,493 in Salisbury to $33.6 million in Hartford. 

The money is intended to “close critical funding gaps in school budgets and town finances without forcing communities to raise property taxes,” according to Lamont’s office. 

Old Lyme Board of Finance Chairman Bennett J. Bernblum and Lyme Board of Finance Chairman Alan Sheiness said the proposed budgets in each town will remain unchanged. The spending plans go to voters in Old Lyme at a May 18 town meeting and to Lyme voters on May 21.

Sheiness said he anticipates Lyme’s tax rate will remain flat at 14.50 mills, as proposed last month by the finance board, when members meet to set the rate immediately following passage of the budget. 

A mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed property value.

Bernblum predicted the Old Lyme finance board would stick with the 16.86-mill tax rate proposed last month, up 0.6 mills over the current year.

He said the additional state funding equates to roughly 0.02 mills. For a property owner with a home valued at $600,000, that could mean a tax reduction of about $17. But he emphasized the numbers are extremely small in the context of a $48.2 million budget. 

“A budget is only a prediction,” he said. “There’s always a variation on the expense side and on the revenue side. And so my guess is the Board of Finance will simply say, ‘OK, so if revenues on this item go up by $70,000, revenues on another item may go down by $70,000. Let’s just leave it alone.’” 

Data from the state Office of Policy and Management shows Old Lyme, which is receiving $1.95 million from the state in the current budget year, is set to get an extra $77,768 in the upcoming fiscal year beginning July 1. That shakes out to $59,794 for the school district and $17,974 for the town. 

Lyme’s current $616,760 allocation from the state will be bolstered by $20,765 in the coming year, including $12,856 for schools and $7,909 for the town. 

Region 18 Superintendent of Schools Ian Neviaser said the education funding is a one-time special appropriation sent directly to towns rather than to the regional school district, but it must be used for educational purposes.

Slides from a Friday state Department of Education presentation to superintendents, provided by Neviaser, show boards of education must approve how the funds are spent.

The funding will be paid by Oct. 31 and does not count toward the state-mandated Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR), which prohibits districts from budgeting less for education than the previous year, with limited exceptions.