CARTHAGE — Thirty-eight people at Monday night’s town meeting approved a budget of $516,519 to be raised through taxes, First Selectman Steve Brown said Wednesday morning.

The budget includes assessments from Franklin County and RSU 10.

“The school and the county assessments were both up a little for very understandable reasons,” Brown said. “The school budget didn’t go up, but it was the cost sharing that went up.”

The municipal portion of the budget is $183,427.40.

“So the bottom line is, there will be a little increase in taxes, but it’s less than 5 percent,” he said.

He said selectmen wouldn’t set the rate until as late as possible, likely by year’s end.

“That way people will have 30 days from then before any interest starts,” Brown said. “We can’t do it any later. We can’t give people any more time.”

Town meeting is usually held in March. But audit problems and delays with the previous town auditor, hiring a new auditor to redo the 2010 audit and then a last-minute search for a new printing firm to do the town report, bumped the meeting to Monday night.

So there was a lengthy discussion on people having trouble paying their taxes on time having fallen on hard times and the town’s policy on that, Brown said.

“We have an article where it’s left in the hands of selectmen, and they voted for that,” he said.

“People have gotten behind in their taxes as happens sometimes over the years as people fell on hard times, but we’ve always been able to resolve it quickly and get deeds back to people and pay off the liens.”

“The money has been paid ultimately,” Brown said.

“So far, it’s been working, and we’re aware that people may run into more hard times here and we’ll try to keep their taxes reasonable and make sure people get the homestead exemption if they’re eligible for it, and encourage them to apply for the circuit breaker program.”

“That’s something the towns aren’t aware of who gets that, so all we can do is encourage people to do that and have the forms available,” he said.

There was additional discussion on general assistance. Brown said the town has and runs a food pantry.

“Ultimately, they can fall back on us and we’ll do what we can to help them get through hard times,” he said.

To help, selectmen annually deliver food packages to from 60 to 70 residents. Brown said they plan to do that on Wednesday afternoon.

He said a majority approved every article as written, but did add $1,000 to the budget on Article 36 toward updating the Veterans Memorial to complement the $5,500 previously raised.

Selectmen recommended $1,500, but the majority OK’d $2,500.

Cindy Hutchinson, who chairs the committee working on updating the memorial to include veterans of wars other than World Wars I and II, sought more funding, Brown said.

“At the Budget Committee meeting, Cindy was there, and we decided to put in more money this year to build it up a little faster,” he said.

“Cindy and the committee have done a lot of work on this, and they think they can do the work, but it will take from $8,000 to $15,000, which is where the estimates are,” Brown said.

Hutchinson wants to complete the work before Memorial Day, so she asked for $5,000, Brown said. Voters, however, opted for half that, deciding they could raise more at the 2012 town meeting.

In other news, Linda Berry was re-elected town clerk and tax collector, both one-year terms; Nancy Blodgett was re-elected to another year as treasurer; and Selectman Banaman “Bob” Weston was re-elected to another three-year term.

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