BROWNSTOWN — The town council gave tentative approval to a proposed 2024 budget of $2,318,895 during a meeting Monday night at the town hall.
This year’s certified budget is $1,835,800. The Indiana Department of Local Government Finance reviews budgets and often reduces them during hearings late fall each year before certification.
The 2024 proposed budget includes a maximum of $992,000 to be raised through property tax levies.
Six of the budget’s 14 funds will be fueled at least in part by property tax revenues, while miscellaneous revenues cover the remainder of those funds and all of the other eight.
The funds and amount of property tax revenues for each of those six is the general fund, $1,336,450 ($744,000); debt service $43,270 ($42,000); motor vehicle highway, $268,700 ($100,000); park and recreation, $127,900 ($54,000); cemetery $50,575 ($7,000); and cumulative capital development $50,000 ($45,000).
Other fund estimates are local roads and street, $32,000; park non-reverting capital, $16,000; cumulative capital improvement, $15,000; economic development income tax credit, $96,000; trash service, $204,000; law enforcement continuing education, $4,000; riverboat wagering tax revenue, $15,000; and local option income tax-public safety, $60,000.
No one spoke in favor of or against the budget during the hearing. Final adoption is set for 6 p.m. Oct. 16 during the council meeting at the town hall, 116 E. Cross St., Brownstown.
The budgets for local governmental units can be found online at budgetnotices.in.gov.
In an unrelated matter, the council voted 4-0 to amend the preliminary engineering report from the present sanitary sewer project to include the cost of a stormwater utility study. That approval came after a public hearing on an ordinance to amend the preliminary engineering report.
The move allows the council to pay Indianapolis-based Wessler Engineering $38,400 to conduct a stormwater utility study.
The money for the study will come from leftover funds from a wastewater State Revolving Fund loan the town received for the sanitary sewer project, which is in the process of winding down.
Mary Atkins, vice president of Wessler Engineering, told the council the stormwater utility study would look at impervious or hard surface areas around town to help develop an equivalent residential unit, or ERU, statistical analysis; review options for stormwater utility policies, billing and management; and compile stormwater management needs, including capital projects, maintenance of deteriorating infrastructure and look at labor, administrative and equipment needs that will be funded through the stormwater utility when it is put in place.
“So we are going to put a study together that will help you compile all that information,” Atkins said.
She said that information will help the council decide what kind of rate might be needed to be put in place if the stormwater utility is approved by the council.