The bill paid by every town in Lamoille County to fund the county court shouldn’t change much in the fiscal year that starts July 1.
The portion of the budget proposal that the towns will pay is $420,622, down $215 from the current budget.
Not all the money budgeted for remodeling the courthouse in Hyde Park was needed, which gave Assistant Judges Karen Bradley and Joel Page some room in planning the budget for fiscal year 2018.
“There was $40,000 left over, which we used to keep the budget from going up,” Bradley said.
Overall, the budget proposal totals $557,612, up $57,375 from the current year. Beyond the $40,000 surplus and the towns’ shares, county revenues include $8,000 from small claims court and $84,314 paid by the state to share the building, a figure that increased nearly $17,000 in the proposed budget.
The final meeting to review the proposed county budget will be on Tuesday, Jan. 10, at 7 p.m. at the Lamoille County Courthouse in Hyde Park.
While the total paid by the 10 towns of Lamoille County won’t go up, the amount paid by each town could change. Each town’s share of the budget is based on the town’s grand list — the total value of all taxable property.
Because of that arrangement, “Stowe pays about 51 percent” of the municipal share of the county budget, Bradley said.
“We also hear a great deal of cases from Stowe, though,” she added.
Stowe’s share in fiscal 2018 will be $210,966, down slightly from $211,659 in the current budget.
Hyde Park, Johnson and Morristown will pay slightly more, between $50 and $100, in the proposed budget while Belvidere, Cambridge, Eden, Elmore, Waterville and Wolcott will pay either slightly less or the same as the current budget.
Town payments toward the county budget dropped markedly in the current budget year, because money was being saved up in prior years for a major renovation of the county courthouse. That work has now been completed.
Town shares totaled $534,330 in the fiscal 2016 budget; they dropped to $420,837 in the current budget.
The budget may be level funded this year, but there are some other capital improvement projects that Bradley believes could be funded in the next few years.
“We are hoping to buy a generator at some point soon,” Bradley said. Right now the courthouse shares a generator with the Lamoille County Sheriff’s Department, but it isn’t really powerful enough to run both buildings.
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