BERLIN — Anticipating only a slight dip in local revenues in the twelve months ahead, the Town of Berlin has adopted its budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

Approved Monday, Sept. 16, at the September regular meeting of the Berlin Town Council, the new budget reflects $308,200 in expected 2024-2025 revenues from sales and other local taxes. Officials had expected that number to come in beneath last year’s budgeted revenue figure, and it did — but only by about $4,000, a sum mayor Patrick Bates said the town should have no trouble accommodating.

“We were a little down on revenue from the current year,” said Bates. “But, with revenue, I always budget for 90 percent of our actual revenue from the year before — so we always start from a position of assuming that we’ll be 10 percent short. We did still come in a little bit over my reduced estimate from that, and I’m assuming that it’ll be down a little less than that when we do our budget next year.”

Berlin’s 2024 fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 of this year through Sept. 30, 2025. Equipped with $250,000 in additional grants as well as a $105,000 allocation out of the town’s standing General Fund, road work — including a $300,000 project along Mt. Carmel Drive — is expected to cost the town more than $400,000 in the coming year. Berlin’s ongoing development of a new municipal park, in conjunction with an associated reconfiguration of its Farmers Market, will mark the town’s other major spend for the year ahead.

The new budget includes $605,000 for the park/market project, almost all of which will be supplied by a $590,000 transfer out of the General Fund (which itself carries into 2024-2025 with an overall balance of $800,000). Bates noted that the project’s spending estimate reflects a worst-case financial scenario: The budgeted $605,000 figure, he said, “should be well above what we’re going to run into — I hope.”

Work is expected to begin soon to develop a park on property the town owns just south of County Road 1615 and north of U.S. Highway 278. In addition to a new pavilion for the Farmers Market, the park’s initial phase also will include a new playground area, a new parking area to accommodate guests for both the park and the market and restroom facilities. The first phase of the park should be ready for guests in time for the Farmers Market’s first opening next year.