DORSET — The Dorset Select Board has approved a $2.7 million budget proposal for fiscal 2023 that would add a full-time assistant town clerk position to allow current clerk Sandra Pinsonault to train her eventual successor.
The spending plan, discussed and approved by the board on Tuesday night, proposes to raise $2.39 million in municipal property taxes. It increases spending by about 3 percent.
The budget is among items on the warning for Dorset’s Town Meeting, which the board also approved Tuesday night.
The hiring of a full-time assistant clerk would raise that line item from $9,500 in the present fiscal year to $41,600 in fiscal 2023.
“This affords bringing on a full-time assistant that can train under [Pinsonault] for the duration of that transition,” Town Manager Rob Gaiotti said. He said the town will likely return to having a full-time clerk once Pinsonault completes her transition.
The budget also includes $75,000 to be set aside for the initial bond payment on the new town offices to be built on Raptor Lane.
“That won’t actually go to payment but is meant to start putting money away for when we owe,” Gaiotti said. “We’ll have some money there to defray that cost. It won’t be as much of a shock to taxes.”
Dorset will hold an informational meeting via Zoom at 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 28, and hold Australian ballot voting on Tuesday, March 1, at the town offices on Mad Tom Road.
The warning includes an advisory question on whether the town is interested in taking part in the field house proposed for Dana M. Thompson Memorial Park in Manchester.
Requests for funding on the warning include $20,000 each for the Dorset Village Library and Dorset Players; $15,000 for the Dorset Marble Protection Association for care of the town’s marble sidewalks; $13,000 for the Northshire Day School in Manchester; and $7,500 for the Dorset Historical Society.