By Wiley Wood

With the town’s annual budget hearing scheduled for late April, the Board of Finance invited First Selectman Sue Dyer to present a preliminary town budget at its March 17 meeting. The board’s chairman, Michael Sconyers, opened the proceedings with cautionary words about budget increases.

Dyer’s budget proposal came in $130,000 above last year’s, for an increase of 3.5 percent. Salary increases accounted for a portion of the hike, as did the increased cost of a new vendor for tax collection and assessment services. The salt and sand allocation was increased by $48,000 to reflect actual usage.

This is also the year when the town will be asked whether it wants to renew the resident state trooper’s two-year contract. The town has paid 70 percent of the total cost, or $130,000 per year. Under the budget recently proposed by the governor and currently under review by the legislature, towns would pay 100 percent of a trooper’s cost. In Norfolk, as reflected in Dyer’s budget, the cost would be $186,000.

A list of capital expenditures that the town cannot defer indefinitely includes the replacement of vehicles in the aging fleets of the Public Works and Norfolk Volunteer Fire departments and the demolition of the old trooper building on Shepard Road and the derelict annex next to Town Hall. These items have not been incorporated into the selectmen’s budget.

Dyer reports that the grand list, the sum of all taxable property in Norfolk, has declined in value by $2 million, or two-thirds of a percent.

The Board of Finance will hold its regular meeting at Town Hall on April 14 at 7:30 p.m. The annual budget hearing is scheduled for April 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Botelle School’s Hall of Flags.