On Wednesday, First Selectman Dan Rosenthal helped open a Zoom meeting of the Legislative Council by hoisting a small flag so everyone involved could honor a regular practice of opening local meetings with a Pledge of Allegiance, before the group got down to business passing several motions related to municipal operations and the 2020-21 budget proposal.

During the meeting, Council Chairman Paul Lundquist also introduced a local proposal he said would parallel an earlier Executive Order that rolled over state elderly and disabled tax credit programs. That motion was quickly and unanimously approved, affecting the same action on Newtown’s own tax credit program — one of the most generous in the state.

“Basically it would allow people already in the program to just stay in the program without requiring a new application,” he said. Any new applicants have until May 15 to apply by contacting the Tax Collector’s office at 203-270-4320.

“They are very accommodating and making the process easy for everyone,” Lundquist told his colleagues who convened in a virtual meeting on the Zoom internet platform. On Town Finance Director Robert Tait’s request, similar action on veterans’ tax credits were also included in the motion.

In back-to-back actions the council discussed and passed motions that zeroed out any property tax increases in the 2020-21 Town and School budget requests.

In planned News & Announcement releases from the Town as well as future articles at newtownbee.com in the coming days, town officials will outline specifics of the budget requests, and will unpack details of capital bonding authorizations that voters would have had the opportunity to weigh in on at referendum.

Due to the COVID-19 emergency, a series of Executive Orders from Governor Ned Lamont are prohibiting local budget referendums and town meetings, to help control possible transmission of the virus. The orders subsequently permit the legislative bodies in each Connecticut community to ratify 2020-21 budgets, as well as any other matters related to those proposals — in Newtown’s case four capital bonding authorizations.

In that series of motions Wednesday, the council unanimously agreed to reduce the overall bottom budget line from $122,326,535, to $121,626,535 — a $700,000 reduction. That new bottom line, if approved by the council in final actions scheduled to take place on either May 6 or May 20, actually generates a fractional reduction in property tax revenue to be collected next fiscal year.

The council arrived at that figure by reducing the Board of Education budget request by $450,000, which school officials agreed to apply to primarily capital and facility upgrade areas of their spending plan. Look for added reporting on that Board of Education action early next week at newtownbee.com.

The council’s motion on the school budget reduction took the proposal from $79,101,776 to $78,651,776.

On the municipal side, where the council has line item authority, the agreement was to reduce the previously submitted request by $250,000. That was accomplished by the following reductions:

*$45,000 from Police vehicles,

*$43,125 from Fire (Companies) capital,

*$68,000 from Highway (Department) capital,

*$37,000 from Public Building maintenance, and

*$56,875 from Parks & Recreation capital.

That brought the formerly recommended municipal budget request from $43,224,759 to $42,974,759.

According to Town Finance Director Robert Tait, the goal was to propose a budget amount not exceeding the prior year’s referendum approved budget amount. The capital items eliminated will now be funded by FEMA funds received from claims from the May 15, 2018 macroburst storm that devastated parts of the community with tornado force winds.

Those FEMA funds are currently available because they were retroactively applied to the municipal fund balance in the 2019-20 budget, and will now be transferred to the Capital & Non-recurring Fund for distribution to offset the reductions outlined above.

On Wednesday, the council also affirmed that Newtown will provide a 90-day grace period for the first round of 2020 property tax payments for those who may be challenged to make those payments before the normal July 31 deadline on bills issued July 1.

The council ultimately rejected the option of proportionately reducing just the mill rate, and resolving the mechanics of the reduction to meet that mill rate adjustment later. The council also opted to not take proportional reductions to delinquency charges on any tax bill that was not paid in full by July 31, with Tait explaining that the administrative challenge to do that would inappropriately burden the tax office and finance department staff.

Tait told the council prior to this action, the town Tax Collector projected revenue in excess of $25 million would have swept in between July 1-31 for anyone whose taxes are paid through mortgage escrow channels.

The town typically sees a 99 percent or better collection rate for property taxes annually, but Tait and Rosenthal both cautioned the council, as well as the boards of finance and selectmen that expenditures and revenues would have to be watched very carefully as taxpayers hopefully begin recovering as plans for the state to allow businesses and other functions to open and resume some level of operations come June.