On Tuesday, March 10, Newtown’s Borough Board of Burgesses received its annual audit report from Auditor Glenn Nanavaty. Nanavaty had filed an extension for the audit as he needed some extra time to work with Ann Scaia, Borough clerk and treasurer, on QuickBooks to prepare the report.

“There were no issues or problems, everything is good as far as audit and audit procedure,” Nanavaty said. He went over some of the numbers, pointing out that the legal line item in the budget is zeroed out. Revenues for Fiscal Year 2025-2026 were “just about” $363,000, according to Nanavaty, and expenses were $433,713. Nanavaty said expenses exceeded revenues by $70,912.

Nanavaty also went over remaining American Relief Plan Act (ARPA) funds, which are considered “revenue,” and other areas like sidewalks and tree maintenance. The burgesses quickly discussed the upcoming project on Queen Street and noted that ARPA funds had to be committed by December last year and must be spent by December this year.

Nanavaty ended his report with, “For a small organization, you have always had very good internal control, approval by somebody independent of the accounting function on all invoices, dual signatures on checks, reviewing budget versus actual, all those are very good controls. You’ve been doing it forever, so please keep it up.” He reminded Scaia to keep her “segregation of duties,” as she is both clerk and treasurer for the Borough.

Nanavaty’s report was accepted as is. He will issue a final version which will be available at the town clerk’s office as well as the office for the Borough. Burgess Jim Gaston made a motion at the meeting to reappoint Nanavaty as the auditor for next year.

Before he left, he took a moment to recognize Tax Collector Jodie Enriquez’s efforts. Taxes uncollected are sitting at two percent right now, which she joked is “too high.”

Then, the burgesses moved to discuss the 2026-2027 budget.

2026-2027 Budget Discussion

At the last meeting, preliminary numbers were offered to the group. Scaia prepared a more thorough look at this year’s budget based off of that discussion.

“Obviously, we looked at it last month and we’re conscious of a couple things … that legal line item is moved up maybe not as high as we talked about,” Warden Jay Maher said. Maher moved down the line items quickly, noting which have stayed the same, decreased, or increased.

The big discussion was about the legal line item. Maher said he had “boosted” it to $60,000.

Senior Burgess Chris Gardner said, “I don’t think that’s enough.”

“So let me ask you this, Chris, cause I was prepared for this,” Maher began, “If I could give you four percent more money in that line item and not raise this budget, what would you say?”

“Here’s what I’m concerned about, and I’m just going to lay it out. So, you read the auditor’s report. Our cash balance is dwindling, and it has been dwindling … I don’t want to budget any higher than we have to, you know me, I hate raising taxes, but what I hate more is at the end of every fiscal year looking to see how much we’ve come in over what we budgeted,” Gardner said.

Maher agreed that the accounts were getting “thin.” Gardner said that the Borough cannot afford another year or two of being “thin.”

“We’re already going to have to raise taxes. We’re gonna have to defend this budget … I know people aren’t going to be happy, I totally understand that, but I just think it’s really, really important and vital for the Borough right now that we budget as realistically as we possibly can,” Gardner said to his fellow burgesses. He said he wanted to increase the legal line item to $80,000 or $90,000.

“We can’t afford to be short anymore,” Gardner said, “Right now, this is what it costs to run the Borough of Newtown because of external forces that are coming upon us.”

Gaston asked if there were any sidewalk projects upcoming, to which Maher said most of the funds will be patchwork because the Queen Street project is coming from ARPA funds. Gaston suggested cutting some funds from sidewalks.

Burgess Sarah Phillips said, “I feel like we’ve been scraping. I feel like people are not going to be happy regardless … [We should] cover our expenses as best as possible.”

Gardner said that the burgesses need to ration out as much as they can but also need to be “realistic” about what they are spending. The group then looked over numbers and moved some funds around.

Gaston suggested taking $2,000 from fire hydrants and $4,000 from sidewalks, which would give an extra $6,000 to the legal line item. He thinks the Borough should budget $75,000 for the legal line item.

“I want to be honest when I say this. I want to offer my stipend into legal,” Maher said.

His colleagues acknowledged his generosity and worked the stipend into the legal line item. After looking through each line item, the new budget is proposed at $336,350 with a .84 mill rate. The proposed budget at February’s meeting was $313,120 with a mill rate of .90. The mill rate went down because of the grand list, but the overall budget is still a 12% jump from last year.

“We have to be realistic,” Gaston said. “We just have to be transparent with the public.”

Other Borough News

Maher updated the group on the insurance policy and Gaston’s memorandum of understanding. He said the memo is being reviewed by the town and the Borough will have to go before the Legislative Council, Board of Finance, and Board of Selectmen to finish the process.

Doug Nelson, Borough Zoning Commission chair, informed Maher that the public hearing regarding the intervenor for the Castle Hill Zoning case has been rescheduled for March 23 as a blizzard canceled the February hearing.

Maher also let the burgesses know that Queen Street has been surveyed for the sidewalk and that there is “more room than I thought” for the project.

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Reporter Sam Cross can be reached at sam@thebee.com.