Good afternoon Sangerville,

It appears the ground is becoming a little white for the first time this year, but the national weather service is saying little to no accumulation is expected. Nevertheless, the weather over the next few days looks like it may be a little ugly at times and roads may become slippery in places for short periods of time. Please be careful driving and slow down appropriately. I have just been informed our crews are out sanding as I write this.
There is not a great deal to report from the town office today as it is Thanksgiving week. A reminder, we will be closed Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. If you are looking for a place to connect with your neighbors and share a Thanksgiving meal, the recovery center on the Douty Hill Rd. will be providing a free community Thanksgiving Dinner. The doors will be open for people to come by and socialize starting at 1:00 PM with dinner at 2:30 PM.
One of my primary responsibilities as town manager is to oversee our budget, or more specifically, see that your tax dollars are spent in a responsible manner according to what you the citizens decide at our annual town meeting. In addition to that responsibility, I help prepare a budget that is reviewed by our select board and budget advisory committee and presented to you, the townspeople at our annual town meeting for approval for the next year. That is why attending town meetings are so important. Every dollar we spend on everything from roads to the fire department to animal control and everything else is approved by you at town meeting.
To most of us that annual tax bill is a significant portion of our family income, I understand with prices of everything going up the way they have the last few years, that even a modest increase in taxes hits those struggling to make ends meet very hard. That is why the select board, budget advisory committee and I will be working very hard to produce a fiscally responsible budget while doing as much as we can to improve town services and infrastructure.
I don’t remember ever learning in school, even in college, how a town collected and spent taxes. Which to me is far more useful to know L’hopitals rule in calculus, but I digress. I thought you folks might consider it interesting, if over the next few posts, I talk about how your tax bill is created and then what happens to the money after you pay your taxes.
The first item to discuss is mil rate. I think we are all familiar with the term mil rate. Mil is short for millage which is derived from the Latin word millesimum which means one thousandth. An analogy is percent, one percent is 1/100th, 1 mil is 1/1000th. An example would be if you have a mil rate of 12, which is fairly close to our mil rate and a property value of 100,000 your annual tax bill would be $1,200. I will talk a little more about assessed property value on my next post.
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Brian