East Hampton Budget Passes on Second Try

The second time was the charm for the East Hampton budget.

In a referendum held on Tuesday, the 2011-12 budget passed 1129-788, a difference of 341 votes.

The 1,917 votes marked an increase of 751 in voter turnout over the referendum held May 3, when the initial budget failed, 585-581. Of the additional 751 votes cast Tuesday, only 203 voted no.

The result came as a welcome relief.

“Words cannot describe how relieved I am,” board of finance chairman Matt Walton said. “We all are. The whole board of finance, I’m sure the town council and other departments are very much relieved.”

The board of finance met after the vote was announced and agreed it would set the mill rate either at its next meeting on June 20 or earlier by holding a special meeting.

After the first referendum, the town council approved the $100,000 cut recommended by the board of finance. All of it was to come from the board of education.

As a result, the overall budget ($37,764,291) called for a $235,903 reduction in spending over fiscal year 2010-11, or 0.62 percent less (see pdf).

“We are satisfied. We’re not overwhelmingly thrilled about it,” council member Thom Cordeiro said. “We understand that some people are still frustrated because their taxes are still going up. Our intention was to have a complete zero [mill rate increase] but due to revaluation that wasn’t possible. I think we are comfortable with the fact this was well-received by the public the second vote. This is a lean budget, we always new that going forward. There’s not a huge amount of expense in here. This is a maintenance budget that we hope will get us through.”

The 1,917 votes equaled 23.3 percent of eligible voters.

“It’s not the largest. It’s right in the mix,” Cordeiro said. “For the last day of May, day after a holiday, I think it was a pretty significant turnout.

“I think we did a good job this time with signage and making sure people were aware of the resources that were available to get information about the budget.”