HEBRON — Selectman Richard Deans said town officials have tried to keep municipal spending down without adversely affecting services, but taxpayers will still see an 11.8 percent increase in the mill rate this year.

Tax bills were mailed in October and payments are due by Tuesday, Dec. 15.

The 2015 tax rate has increased from $13.68 to $15.30, an increase of $1.62. A home assessed at $100,000 would see its tax rate increase from $1,368 to $1,530, an increase of $162.

The rate must provide enough money to cover town expenses and assessments from the county and local education. This year the town was assessed $66,983 in county taxes, $673,115 for local education and raised $780,976 to cover municipal costs.

Deans said a large part of the increase came from adding $137,409 in debt. Voters at town meeting in March authorized selectmen to bond up to $175,000 to build a public works garage next to the one on Hebron Station Road.

“(The increase is) also because we’ve got less municipal revenue-sharing coming in and less excise taxes than before,” Deans said.

Deans said if the town had chosen to go with the minimum tax rate, it would have only reduced the rate from an 11.8 percent increase to a 10.01 percent increase.

With ever-increasing school and county budgets, and less revenue in excise taxes coming into the town each year, it has been a struggle to keep within what the town has to spend, Deans said.

“We’ve held the line pretty much on municipal appropriations,” he said. “But when you’re holding down your municipal (budget), we have to make adjustments to pay for education and county.”

Deans says it’s important for taxpayers to understand the budget and how the local education portion affects the overall tax rate.

The school administration has an annual meeting with each town to discuss the budget, including a breakdown of each town’s assessment, but this year decided not to go town to town because of scheduling conflicts. Instead, towns were grouped into pairs for budget presentations.

“I’m concerned that the school administration decided to end their annual visits to each town to present the budget and presented them in a combined manner,” Deans said. “I’ve been to all the school budget meetings. There’s no input at all. Most of the people don’t partake when they could.”

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