Board approves budget for Town Meeting
ROCKINGHAM — ROCKINGHAM-The Selectboard has approved a $5 million fiscal year 2015 budget as presented, with $4 million to be raised by taxes.
Neither the library budget nor the social service agency contributions were included in the town budget, and will be considered and voted on in separate articles.
Voters will consider the budget at Annual Town Meeting in March.
Town to consider Arch Bridge lighting
ROCKINGHAM-Town Manager Chip Stearns has informed the Selectboard that the New Hampshire Department of Transportation was giving the town the opportunity to take over the lighting of the Arch Bridge, in the wake of that state's decision last fall to phase out bridge lighting.
The board directed Stearns to look into costs of lighting to bring to its next meeting.
Clarification
BELLOWS FALLS- On Jan. 12, 2012, Rockingham Free Public Library trustees voted to ask the town to include a 3 percent cost of living raise, in the fiscal year 2013 library budget.
This fact contradicts an assertion made at a Trustees' meeting earlier this month by Trustee Elayne Clift.
Clift was quoted in the Jan. 8 Commons, and the error was repeated in the story's headline.
Célina Houlné, the library director at the time, clarifies that the 3 percent increase was to enable the library staff to catch up to and keep pace with the town's pay scale and was negotiated to be applied over three years in July, at the same time as town employees received their cost of living raises.
It was intended to be applied as a 2-percent raise in fiscal 2012 and a 1-percent raise in fiscal 2013. No raise was scheduled for fiscal 2014.
“But this did not always happen,” Houlné said, explaining that “the staff understood” the library's hard times and the concurrent renovations.
The RFPL trustees did not approve a cost of living increase for fiscal year 2015, when they sent the budget before the Selectboard, as described in last week's story.