BERLIN \u2014 Berlin residents will return to the polls May 26 for a second referendum on the town\u2019s proposed fiscal year 2026-27 budget after voters rejected both the town government and Board of Education spending plans last month, saying the budgets were too low.<\/p>\n
Town officials have revised the proposal ahead of the second vote, slightly increasing both the total budget and the proposed mill rate.<\/p>\n
According to documents submitted for the second referendum, the proposed general fund budget now totals about $110.26 million, an increase from the roughly $110.08 million proposal voters rejected in April.<\/p>\n
The revised proposal also increases the mill rate from 31.28 to 31.32.<\/p>\n
The changes follow strong opposition during the first referendum, in which many voters said both spending plans were too low. The Board of Education budget failed by a vote of 1,022 to 459, while the town government budget failed 1,237 to 249.<\/p>\n
The original proposed FY27 budget included a 3.48% increase over the current year and called for a 0.66 mill increase. Officials said after the referendum that the Board of Finance would review the results and consider revisions before sending a new proposal to the Town Council.<\/p>\n
Town officials had previously said the education budget could see a larger increase because voters clearly signaled support for additional school funding during the referendum.<\/p>\n
The second referendum will take place the day after Memorial Day.<\/p>\n
If voters reject the budget a second time, the process will move to the next stage, where the town would set the mill rate without another referendum.<\/p>\n
Turnout during the first referendum was higher than usual. Town officials reported that 1,512 voters participated, representing about 9.39% of eligible voters, roughly double the turnout from the previous year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN \u2014 Berlin residents will return to the polls May 26 for a second referendum on the town\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,7965,8582,8584,25227,25226,25225,8583],"class_list":["post-23594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-board-of-education","tag-board-of-finance","tag-budget-referendum","tag-mill-rate","tag-proposed-budget","tag-referendum","tag-town-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}