The 2024 – 2025 Town Budget – A Summary

Cast Your Vote May 14!

The Board of Finance (BOF) recently approved a proposed town and school budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year of $168,255,917.  The budget includes funding for town operations and road maintenance ($45,926,330), school district operations ($115,041,000), and debt service payments ($7,288,587).

The total represents a year-over-year increase of 3.85% in spending, compared with an increase in the prior year of 4.07%.  After factoring in growth of the town’s tax base (Grand List) over the past year, the proposed budget will result in a mill rate increase of 2.09% if approved by the voters at the town budget referendum on May 14th.

The mill rate is multiplied by your property’s assessed value (which is 70% of the estimated market value from its last re-assessment) to determine your tax bill for the year.   For a house assessed at $480,000 (the estimated median assessed property value for 2024), the mill rate change would result in an increase in annual taxes of about $260.

Development of this year’s budget came with several big challenges. 

  • Debt service costs have been declining steadily over the past seven years as the town was paying off the last of the borrowings for the “Bundle” — bonds issued in the early 2000’s for a major school building/renovation program, as well as the construction of the Rec Center. The amount of outstanding town debt has now bottomed out, and as a result, what had been a helpful budget “tailwind” has reversed direction, with debt service costs increasing by 9% into next year.  (Note that while the current level of debt service is expected to increase in coming years, it remains well below the peak of 10-15 years ago.) 
  • In addition, the tax base increased by only 0.70% this past year. This figure was smaller than recent years, primarily due to lower growth in the value of motor vehicles. This came as used car price inflation abated and as the state of Connecticut shifted to a new data source for assessing car values.
  • Lastly, within the school district’s budget, special education services and costs continue to be an important element in budget growth.

Partially offsetting these challenges were several favorable results for the current year budget.  Investment income continues to benefit from higher short-term interest rates, and should come in about $900,000 above budget target for fiscal year 2024.  The school district received a premium rebate on its health insurance costs due to favorable participant experience, enabling the district to forecast to a budget surplus $500,000.  Finally, the town received an unbudgeted state revenue sharing grant of $633,000. 

Combined with other expected positive budget developments, the BOF forecasts a current year budget surplus of about $2.9 million.  In its recent budget deliberations, the BOF voted  to allocate $2,750,000 of this projected surplus to the 2024-25 budget as a revenue source, significantly benefitting the final mill rate calculation.  Even with this level of surplus contribution, the town’s resulting Unassigned Fund Balance – that is, the town’s “Rainy Day Fund” – is estimated to be $20.2 million at the start of the new fiscal year, which is 12% of the coming year’s proposed budget.  This level is in line with the new Budget Reserve policy target of 9% to 12%, that was recently adopted by the BOF.

The Board of Finance also reviewed and adopted proposed capital budgets for the town and schools totaling $8,352,347.  Included in these budgets are:

  • about $650,000 for new radio equipment for police and fire staff
  • $390,000 for repairs and improvements to several town landmarks like the Fountain and the Peter Parley Schoolhouse
  • $387,000 for additional pickle ball courts (likely at the Rec Center)
  • $1,140,000 for bridge, sidewalk, and school playground improvements
  • $512,500 for repairs to the Shadow Lake and Lake Mamanasco dams

Several of the capital projects have or are expected to qualify for outside grants totaling $1.5 million, so the final cost of the adopted capital budget should net out to about $6.9 million, or about 4% of the operating budgets.

Anyone who observed the budget deliberations over February and March will find, as we did, that the administrations and respective boards of the town and the school district demonstrated a thoughtful and detailed review of the various budget submissions.  The result are budgets that serve town residents well, continuing to provide a high level of services, while also finding opportunities to expand service offerings, such as the school district’s plans to extend support for visual arts and to offer world language across elementary grade levels.

We encourage everyone to study, and more importantly, to come out to vote in support of this year’s budget proposals.  The budgets have been carefully developed, provide needed and valuable services to town residents, and are achieved with only a small increase in the town tax rate.

The town budget referendum will be held this year on Tuesday, May 14th.  Voting is open from 6am to 8pm at Yanity Gym.  Prior to that, on the evening of May 6, will be the annual Town Budget Meeting, with presentations on the budget by town and school officials and voting on the items in the capital budget under $100,000 in cost.

Please play your part in our town democracy by coming out to vote in support of all of the budget proposals.

Mike and Andrew are members of the Ridgefield Board of Finance.  The opinions expressed in this article are solely their own, and are not intended to represent the positions of the Board of Finance or its other members.

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