Goshen Board of Finance Reviews Proposed 2027 Budgets

1/28/2026

Present: Chair, Ned Bixler,Members- Robert Valentine,  Scott Tillmann, James Korner, Paul Collins, Lorraine Lucas. Patrick Reilly, Alternate. Unexcused: Robert Layer, Alternate.

Following the re-elections of Chairman Bixler and Vice Chairman Valentine, the Board discussed the Dec. 17 meeting minutes, and an item addressing the $500,000.00 matching STEAP grant (Small Town Economic Assistance Program) for a new Public Works facility. Valentine pointed out that the draft minutes inaccurately stated that the move from the originally approved 190 Sharon Turnpike location to the current Public Works location at 38 Torrington Road had been approved at a town meeting. 

“It's never gone to a town meeting,” he said. The minutes were then adopted with corrections. 

Questions surrounding two State grants were revisited later in the meeting, however, as $64,880.89 that was not budgeted was spent by the Town on Engineering studies. The Public Works STEAP grant requires that the Town match the $500,000.00 awarded and a $1.5 million DOT grant for a project to stabilize culverts where the Marshepaug River passes under West Hyerdale Drive requires 20% matching Town funds. As each of the projects require in excess of $20,000 of Town funds, “both of those grants are going to require Board of Finance action and town meeting,” Valentine explained.

“But most importantly,” Valentine continued, “what I want to get addressed today is that we have no money for this project at all. Zero. None's been appropriated. So the first thing we have to do, is we have to figure out how we properly book those funds that were already spent. So we're going to have to find a home for that. And my suggestion is to take it out of major road projects, backfill with Town Aid Road [funds] for the projects that you were planning for those dollars.” (Note: Goshen receives annual grants of $270,000 from the State to aid in road maintenance.)

Further, on the topic of road maintenance, Public Works Director Garrett Harlow was tasked with preparing a 10-year plan covering all town roads. 

“As I drive around town,” Valentine said, “I noticed that West Street Extension has been paved.”

“Request of all the residents,” Harlow responded. “They sent a letter in to the Selectman requesting that the road be paved.”

“Yeah, well, that's good,” Valentine replied. “But every time we do one of those things, it's a couple hundred thousand dollars. And so last year when we were having this discussion about there not being… enough money to do your chip seal and yet I noticed that you spent $200 ,000 on Bare Hill Road.”

“Those are two different, we have an operational and a capital side there,” Harlow said. “Bare Hill coming out of capital, chip seal coming out of operational.” 

“And for me, [it] doesn't matter because it all comes out of the same pocket when I write the check for my taxes,” Valentine retorted. “I don't know about you, but when I write the tax check to the tax collector, it doesn't matter whether it's an operating or a capital. But my concern is that we have paved four roads in the past four years that were dirt roads, that if we're tight on being able to maintain our roads, my opinion would be that we don't pave dirt roads when we don't have enough money to chip seal. Would it be nice to have every dirt road paved? Yeah, it'd be great. In the current climate, we don't have money for doing that. When we're chiseling firetruck dollars, we shouldn't be spending $200 ,000.00 on paving a road that doesn't need to be paved, …any road.”

Future costs for replacement equipment for the Fire Co. had been part of an earlier preliminary budget discussion.

1st Selectman Breakell raised the issue of aging town buildings and the need to plan for future  replacement. “Town Hall, Library, Public Works, Fire Company, Camp Coch is 31,624 square feet of structure that the town owns”, he explained. “Based on replacement costs… they're typically $600 a square foot. I backed it down to $500 a square foot. That's a $17 million campus that we have, for replacement costs. Based on those replacement costs, you figure approximately 2% to 2.5 % of that $17 million per year maintenance; roof, siding, window, whatever. which is $438,500 a year or something like that. And I don't need a facilities committee to tell me that we're not spending $438,000 a year on the town facilities. So we do have something to talk about there that...” 

“So your point is we're building some liabilities maybe unknowingly?”, Valentine asked. 

“Correct. That's exactly where I'm coming from,” Breakell answered.

Representatives of the 3 publicly accessible town lakes addressed the board to request restoration of funding for lake weed control. In 2025, their budgets were cut from $15,000 each to $7,500 each due to the Region 20/Region 6 school budget crisis. The representatives asked for the $45,000 budget to be restored. The 3 lakes will privately raise an additional $96,000 to complete the work required in 2026-7. After lengthy discussion, the board voted to receive the budget request.

“And just so everybody knows we do only receive budgets at this time,” Valentine explained. “We don't approve them until really at the end in May and it's when we have the total picture.”