Our budget letter will be going out to taxpayers at the end of this week. In the letter we will outline in specifics details about both the Town budget and the Board of Education (BOE) budget. In a general explanation, the two budgets together will end up being slightly more than a 2% tax increase (2.2%). Both the Town and the BOE expense budgets increased by about 3.7%; however, we experienced additional revenue that offset some of the budget increase. Our budget letter, along with next week’s column from me, will outline more specifically the reasons for the increase.
Given what other towns in our area are experiencing in terms of escalations to their budgets, we are pleased to offer such a moderate increase. For six years previous to this we have kept the budget flat one year (2018/19) and decreased it in the five subsequent years (2019 thru 2023). The Annual Budget Town Meeting will be held at Charter Hall on Saturday, April 20 at 10am and the budget referendum will be held from 8am to 8pm on Saturday, May 4 in Charter Hall.
Our resident trooper, Officer Wayne Tate, is having “Drug Take Back” day at his office (in the firehouse) on Saturday, April 27 from 9am to 1pm. This is an opportunity to safely discard of the prescription medicines that went unused in households. After the drugs/medicines are collected, the state police will safely discard of them in an environmentally friendly way. This effort also keeps unused drugs out the wrong hands.
The Sherman Old Store, across from the Historical Society, opened last weekend and will remain open from noon to 4pm on Thursdays through Sundays into the fall. If you’ve never shopped in this classic place of commerce, do yourself a favor and stop by. The range and assortment of clothing, cooking stuff, glassware, yummy candy, literature, and whole lot of other goodies is truly amazing.
Sherman Roadside and Community Clean-Up Day will be held on Saturday, April 20 from 9am to 1pm. On this day, the community walks the roadways and picks up the winter’s garbage and discards the bags full of trash in a dumpster in the lower Mallory Town Hall parking lot. The day also provides an opportunity to drop off your hard-to-get-rid-of household garbage, but truly, this is a day for the community to walk along the roads and clean up our beautiful Town. There are fliers explaining how everything works available in Mallory Town Hall. Safety vests, trash bags, and disposable gloves to be utilized that day are also free and available in Mallory Town Hall.
I’m happy to report that our Sherman School Building Committee is starting to make progress towards developing a plan to eventually present to voters that will repair much needed infrastructure issues and possibly renovate sections of the school. It’s encouraging to see the teamwork developing and I know that we will get something suitable done. It’s also encouraging to see the public’s interest at the various meetings. Keep coming!
