Milton officials unveil $3.4 million budget

Milton officials unveiled their first draft of the town’s $3.4 million 2021 fiscal year budget, which shows the town with a small $3,700 surplus, but also proposes a property tax increase.

The proposed 6 ¼ percent tax increase would bring the town an additional $81,000 in revenue. 

Councilman Rich Baty, finance committee chair, said most general expenses have been up the past two years, so an increase is needed. 

Town Manager Kristy Rogers brought the budget before the finance committee Aug. 5 to work through details, with the biggest issues regarding the police department and the capital improvements budget.

While the police department is one of the town’s largest expenditures, more than $1 million total, it is working short-staffed. Rogers’ first budget draft actually reduced the police budget by $11,000. 

The town has eight slots available for officers; five are occupied by full-time officers with a sixth officer currently in the state police academy. That leaves two additional spots that could be filled. New Chief Derrick Harvey has stated his desire to see those two positions filled to allow the department to be fully staffed. 

Rogers told the finance committee to table discussions on the department right now as administrative issues are worked out. She said the sixth officer will not be ready to be on his own until six months after his academy graduation. Once that officer is street-ready, Rogers said, the town can look at bringing on other officers. She said the draft budget includes salary expenses for eight officers.

For Baty, the town’s treasurer, the main issue is capital expenses. The other large portion of the budget is for the Streets Department, which has a budget of $1.3 million. Much of that is eaten up by $814,000 for the Magnolia Street drainage project, which is being paid for by a combination of grant funding and surplus transfer tax revenue. However, it also includes the purchase of a new Ford F250 truck with a snowplow, $35,000, and a dump truck, budgeted at $145,000. 

Baty said he wanted to see better justification for some of the purchases in the budget, and he wants to set up a program to spread purchases out over the course of three years. 

“It seems to me, the more expensive items we got, the less documentation we have,” Baty said. 

He said the dump truck proposal did not show much in terms of justification or options considered, such as whether a truck could be leased or a used vehicle purchased.

Part of Baty and other committee members’ desire to spread out capital purchases is the town’s limited revenue streams. Unlike Rehoboth Beach and Lewes, Milton has no beach or parking meters to drive revenue, which is mostly derived from property taxes and transfer tax proceeds. 

Rogers first broached the idea of a property tax increase in discussions for the fiscal year 2020 budget. Her original proposal was for a 3 percent increase, designed to bring in $33,000 to help with capital improvements. Milton has not raised its property tax since 2015. 

On transfer tax, Rogers reduced the budgeted amount for 2021 compared to 2020 by $50,000, from $255,000 to $205,000. It has generally been her policy to not budget transfer tax revenue high, so the town is not relying on it to balance the budget. While the 2020 budget had $255,000 listed for transfer tax revenue, the town took in $328,000 from home sales.

Milton Town Council will have a workshop discussion of the draft budget at its regular meeting, 6:30 p.m., Monday, Aug. 17, at Grace Church. After workshopping the budget and suggesting changes, council will set a public hearing where citizens can weigh in before council adopts it. The fiscal year 2021 budget must be in place by Oct. 1.

Besides the budget, council will also discuss forwarding an annexation application for nearly 8 acres of land at the corner of Union Street Extended and Route 16 to Planning and Zoning Commission for an advisory opinion, award the 2020 residential waste collection contract, and discuss a request for an irrigation well at 203 Chandler St.