LEICESTER — The annual town meeting in Leicester ended up being a fairly sleepy affair. On Monday at the Leicester Meeting House, residents approved to town and highways budgets as warned
The approved general fund spending plan of $281,274 represents a decrease of $1,682, or a half a percent, from last year. The $356,950 in highway spending that voters OK’d is $10,615, or 3 percent, more than last year.
All together, municipal spending approved on Monday would require raising $472,617 in taxes from Leicester property owners up four-tenths of a percent from the current year.
But that was before residents OK’d a separate appropriation of $40,000 for paving. That extra amount will figure into the final tax rate, which the selectboard will set later this year.
On Tuesday, Leicester residents voted in a slate of uncontested candidates for town office. They included Richard Reed, moderator one-year term; Brad Lawes, selectboard, three-year term; Ronald Fiske, selectboard, two-year term; Deb Miner, auditor, three-year term; and Beth Ripley, delinquent tax collector, one-year term. Mike Rakowitz won one-year terms for two positions: grand juror and town agent.
Also at the polls, Leicester residents voted on the budget for Otter Valley Unified Union School District, which includes the towns of Leicester, Brandon, Goshen, Pittsford, Sudbury and Whiting. Voters in the district approved the $19,243,835 OVUUSD spending plan by a tally of 772-356. That budget figure represented a roughly $550,000 cut in spending, or 1.22 percent, from the current budget.
The proposed budget calls for Whiting Elementary School to become a preschool center. Sudbury and Leicester schools will split kindergarten through third grade at one school and grades four to six at the other, although a decision has not been made about which will host which grades.
In other OVUUS voting, Leicester resident Greg Bernhardt won re-election, uncontested, to a three-year term on the school board as an at-large member.