The only capital request the town is requesting this year is the purchase of a new Fire Department rescue vehicle at a cost of $149,000, which will be taken from the reserve fund for that purpose.
The current rescue truck will be repurposed for use by the Highway Department.
The majority of the remaining articles ask for additions to the town’s various capital reserves: $19,000 for the fire pumper, $40,000 for the fire tanker, $20,000 for the 2008 dump truck, $8,000 for the backhoe, $6,000 for the highway department truck, and $16,000 for the mid-sized dump truck.
The first payments on the bond to repair Mountain Road come due in 2017, and the resulting $215,000 increase accounts for the majority of the proposed increase in this year’s budget, which is up from $1.8 million to just under $2 million.
The budget includes a 2 percent increase in salary for staff, which aside from the bond payment, resulted in the largest increases in the budget.
There were some decreases, however, including a nearly $11,000 drop in the Fire Department line, as a result of paying off the lease for the department’s air packs, and a large decrease in the streets and highways request — which was up last year in anticipation of assisting with the paving portion of the Mountain Road project.