The quaint New England town of Scotland, incorporated in the mid-1850s, is expected to run out of money by March or April of next year, First Selectman, Daniel Syme, said.
“If you could imagine running your home budget on 25 percent, it’s creating nightmares,” said Syme, a lifelong resident of Scotland.
The town faces as much as a $900,000 cut from Gov. Dannel Malloy’s executive order that dictates spending while the state operates without a budget.
Under the House Democrats’ budget unveiled last week, the state would reduce spending for Scotland by $230,000, which Syme said is better, but still puts the town on a difficult fiscal path.
“If you could imagine running your home budget on 25 percent, it’s creating nightmares,” he said.
Syme said the town has already made efforts to reduce costs and share services on things like building management and tax assessment, and Scotland already shares a high school with two neighboring towns.
Syme said he’s explored having the Town of Windham handle Scotland’s tax collection, but it would end up costing Scotland more than having a part-time tax collector on staff.
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He said the town is also exploring options to share education from high school down to Pre-K to save money.
"Inaction was not an option for us and we needed to sharply reduce spending in many areas--including spending that we all agree is important and worthwhile ... but we continue to hope to have a full budget adopted by October," Chris McClure, a spokesman with the Office of Policy Management, said of Malloy’s Executive Order, said.
Syme said he hopes a budget is passed soon or the situation will only get worse and the town will have to consider drastic options, like dissolving.
“I never thought in my 64 years of being in this town that we even would dream of the possibility of this happening,” he said.
