Property taxes were lowered and new budgets were passed by unanimous decisions at the regular meeting of the New Boston City Council last week.
The council passed an ad valorem tax rate of $0.284448 per $100 of assessed property value. The new rate is a $0.17 drop from last year’s rate. It also decreases the city’s revenue for the general fund by almost $500,000. The city was able to lower their budget because the interest and sinking (I&S) rate was lowered due to a decrease in debt owed on capital projects, said Pollyanna Moore, city secretary.
Moore is responsible for preparing the $5.7 million general fund and $9.5 million public works budgets which also passed the council.
“The department heads have done a fantastic job of making everyone aware of what their needs were,” Mayor Ron Humphrey said.
The budget cut from the reduced tax rate will not cause an interruption in any services the city provides to residents or businesses, Rob Carr added.
The new tax rate will provide $415,654 for daily op-erations to the general fund, which is an increase of about $27,500 from last year.
In other business, the council passed the budgets for the New Boston Special Industrial Development Corporation (SIDC) and Community Development Corporation (CDC) presented by Lee Elliott, SIDC/CDC executive director.
The budgets, Elliott said, were the first budgets to be adopted by the organizations, he added.
“One thing we want to do is increase transparency … and so we tried to spell out as much as we can,” Elliott told the council.
The SIDC, Elliott said, will focus on property ready to be built on and demolishing outdated and unusable buildings.
The CDC will primarily focus their efforts on beautification of downtown and festivals.
Most of the income for both the CDC and SIDC comes from a percentage of all sales tax collected at New Boston businesses. Additional income comes from grants.
The council also approved the purchase of four vehicles currently being leased for use by the police department. The approved cost of the four vehicles was $12,736.
