By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton municipal officials are getting an early start on budget talks, in a move to establish goals for a spending plan to fund the government., Town administrator Marc D. Dashield, at tonight’s council meeting, is scheduled to give the governing body a presentation in which he will discuss the “challenges” the town will face in 2017. Like with other public entities, increases in health insurance and pension costs are cost drivers., “We’re too early, really, to talk about the tax numbers,” he said Monday at Mayor Liz Lempert’s press conference., Mr. Dashield said the town has a preliminary budget. “So we’ll talk about where we are as of today. And this is the budget, without us even beginning to make any decisions about our revenue or our expenditures,” he said., The town is working early on the spending plan, in a move to avoid a repeat of last year when there was “a last-minute” push by council to reduce the budget and officials having to “scramble” in Mayor Lempert’s words., “The challenge every year is that you want to be making your decisions based on having the information in front of you,” she said. “But by the time that you have the information in front of you, you don’t have a lot of flexibility, in terms of time, to make those decisions.”, Mr. Dashield said the town is looking to introduce the budget by the second council meeting in February.
