RIPTON — Ripton residents at their annual meeting on Monday evening overwhelmingly supported a fiscal year 2018 general fund budget of $250,947 and a highway spending plan of $323,600.
That combined $574,547 request was slightly less than the combined $576,701 Ripton voters approved last year, also by voice vote.
Residents on Monday also agreed to:
•  Apply any surplus from the fiscal year 2015-2016 general fund budget to the town’s building fund.
•  Earmark $40,000 to the Ripton Volunteer Fire Department and First Response Department.
•  Appropriate $13,000 for the Ripton Cemetery Commission.
•  Give a combined total of $21,266 to a variety of Addison County social service organizations.
For the first time in many decades, Ripton residents didn’t field a local school budget on their town meeting day. They — along with other voters in the newly unified Addison Central School District (ACSD) — instead decided a K-12 budget for the entire seven-town district.
The proposed ACSD budget for 2017-2018 calls for approximately $37.7 million in spending to cover the combined operating costs of all district schools. The budget reflects $30,428,802 in net, local education spending, which represents a 0.6-percent decrease compared to this year, according to ACSD officials.
Ripton’s new homestead education property tax rate is projected to decline from the current $1.92 per $100 in property value to $1.802 as a result of the unified budget, according to the ACSD budget documents.
There were no contested elections in Ripton this year. Unopposed candidates earning the nod in Australian ballot voting on Tuesday included Laureen Cox, three years, selectboard; Tim Hanson, one year, moderator; Alison Joseph Dickinson, one year, town clerk; Carolyn Smith, one year, town treasurer; Perry Hanson, local school director, 10 months; and Jerome Shedd, UD-3 school director, 10 months.