Alton voters to hear revised budget proposal Tuesday

ALTON — Voters declined to pass the proposed operating budget for the third straight year at Town Meeting, which put town governance in a bind. Now, a revised budget town leaders hope is more palatable will be up for a vote in June.

The next step in the process toward a budget is a deliberative session Tuesday, at Prospect Mountain High School, where voters will be able to ask questions and make amendments before the election next month. The revised $10.1 million budget is a 4.1% increase over 2025, instead of the 10.9% increase voted down on March 10.

This comes about a month after a budget committee public hearing, where Town Administrator Ryan Heath and the committee went over the revised proposal. If this budget is voted down, the town will adopt a default budget of $9.8 million, which is about 3.4% lower than last year's.

“We looked at the positions of what we currently have vacant and what we have open,” Heath said during the April 8 budget committee hearing. “We’ve identified six positions — two through [public works], two through fire, and two through police — that are currently vacant and open. The proposal that’s in front of you is removing the funding for those six positions that are vacant right now, and redistributing the money to the occupied positions that we have within the town.”

He said in the original proposed budget, one of the biggest changes was for four full-time firefighters the town voted on in a separate warrant article. The addition of those salaries and benefits was a substantial increase over last year’s default budget.

“That is why the only option moving forward to adjust and come in at more of an agreeable one was to adjust wages, was to adjust vacant positions and benefit packages,” Heath said. “Because there wasn’t really a lot of other areas in the budget that we could make big changes, or make up a lot of ground.”

After the budget was voted down at Town Meeting, leaders went back to the drawing board to try to make the revised budget more appealing for voters, while also taking care of necessary town functions and providing previously neglected pay raises for current employees. The selectboard approved holding a Special Town Meeting at their meeting on March 24.

The revised budget includes two full-time firefighter positions, and two part-time administrative workers. The part-time workers don’t receive benefits.

“This budget includes the positions that are currently occupied,” Heath said in March following the selectboard approval of holding a special vote. “What this budget is doing is securing the active employees, meaning we don’t have to lay anyone off.”

At the March 24 selectboard meeting, Fire Chief James Reinert said two areas cut in the proposed operating budget were full-time and holiday wages, and to not fill two open positions. He hopes for his department be at as full capacity as possible, saying with almost 90 miles of land and water in a geographically large territory, it “puts us behind the 8-ball in our response times.”

He said out of 1,211 calls last year, the fire department had 713 medical calls, and 73% were for ambulance transports, and 7.5% were overlapping calls.

Reinert said what was considered full-time staffing in 2025 was the bare minimum. The original warrant article budgeted two full-time personnel, and the department would have used on-call firefighters. The hope, he said, was to bring a third person in to assist with larger incidents.

“I would ask, respectfully, to at least look at funding three of those four,” Reinert said at the selectboard meeting. “That would give me the ability to have eight full-time personnel, two per shift on our four shifts, and we’d still try to utilize the per diem staff to fill any of those vacancies.”

The revised budget only includes two more full-time firefighter positions, but voters can make amendments if so inclined during the deliberative in the Prospect Mountain High School auditorium at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5.

The special election is from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, June 6, at Prospect Mountain High.