Fayston voters will vote on Town Meeting Day whether to pass a budget of $1,627,750.89, a 13% increase over last year’s budget.
Audit expenses have gone up 13.8% because the town will be doing a comprehensive audit, which occurs every three years. “Our previous auditor is no longer providing municipal audit service,” said Fayston Select Board chair Jared Cadwell via email. “We put our annual audit out to bid for our comprehensive/full audit which occurs every three years.” The town will be using Sullivan, Powers and Co., which was the only company that responded to the bid.
With increased fuel costs, diesel for the town’s highway equipment has gone up 56%. “Fuel costs are significantly higher and while we expect some decline in prices, they still will be much higher than a year ago,” Cadwell said.
An additional $10,000 is proposed for repairs to the road grader in order to extend its service life. “We can't afford to replace it as soon as we had planned due to the high cost of heavy equipment generally,” Cadwell said. “Also, supply chain issues and the general high cost of repairs have prompted us to raise the repairs line in the budget.” Repairs are estimated to cost $35,000, compared to $25,000 last year.
Twenty-five thousand dollars has been allocated to transfer road retreatment, which is a new line item. “We are building up our retreatment (asphalt) reserve fund in anticipation of German Flats Road repaving in the next three to four years,” Cadwell said. Transfer equipment costs have gone up $75,000 (37.5%) to replace one of the town’s tandem plow trucks.
