Essex voters officially adopted the town budget for the 2022-’23 fiscal year at its annual town meeting on May 9. The budget calls for a total of $26,042,584 in spending over the next year, a 1.52 percent increase from current year’s budget.

The schools budget comprises 65 percent of the overall budget, with $16,965,962 in approved spending for 2022-’23, and increase of $144,049 or 0.86 percent over current spending. The town side is $9,076,622, and increase of $322,100 or 2.77 percent.

The budget was unanimously approved by 15 eligible electors in the town, but given that small number of votes, attendance was not taken, as is a practice by the Board of Selectmen during town meetings for budgets, given the satisfaction with yearly budgets.

“It was a reasonable budget. We’ve passed nine budgets in a row that were unanimous. The town is generally quite happy with how the boards of Ed[ucation], Selectman, and Finance have managed the town’s finances,” said First Selectman Norm Needleman.

“I take it to mean that if they hated us, we would know about it. If you do anything they don’t like, they show up.

As part of the budget, the Board of Finance decided to implement a decrease in the town mill rate to offset the increasing costs of automobiles.

“We did a lower mill rate for cars so that we were revenue neutral on the aggregate number of cars that we have in town except for new cars, and we knew there were few of them,” said Needleman.

As the value of automobiles in town is up 35 percent due to rising costs of used cars, a constant mill rate would have meant that town residents owning the same car as last year would have been paying more for their automobile.

“It would have inflated the amount of money we received this year in total tax collection, but next year when those numbers settle back down, we would lose that $400,000 to $500,000,” said Needleman. “So I wanted it to have the least impact possible on property owners. This was a prudent way to do it; it’s allowed by statute to have two mill rates.”

The budget will go into effect on July 1, and will run through June 30, 2023.