Wilton’s Board of Finance (BOF) has issued broad budget guidance to the Board of Education (BOE) and Board of Selectmen (BOS) for their FY2025 budget requests: don’t push a mill rate increase over 4%.
At Tuesday evening’s (Nov. 14) meeting, the BOF reviewed an analysis of preliminary FY’25 BOE and BOS budget forecasts which (along with debt service and other assumptions) would result in a projected mill rate increase of 5.4% — but after discussion, the BOF reached a consensus that such an increase would simply be too high.
The analytical effort was led by BOF member Matt Raimondi, who presented an executive summary and key data that was the subject of the board’s discussion. (His presentation document is posted on the Town website.)
Raimondi noted that any guidance the BOF provides is “non-binding” (for both the BOF or any Town board) and “purely directional.”
The meeting had a larger-than-usual audience. In addition to active participation by Superintendent Dr. Kevin Smith and First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice, the meeting was attended (either in person or via Zoom) by:
- Newly elected BOF members Tim Birch and Rudy Escalante (Prasad Iyer was unable to attend)
- First Selectman-elect Toni Boucher
- BOE member Nicola Davies, newly elected member Lori Bufano and re-elected chair Ruth DeLuca
Latest Analysis
The BOF began looking at early BOS and BOE budget forecasts and mill rate projections in August. (At that time, the projected mill rate increase looked even more extreme, at 6.6%.) The latest analysis by the BOF reflects “refinements” using more up-to-date assumptions, including the following changes:
- A $70,000 decrease to the preliminary forecast for the BOS budget (the total BOS budget would be projected to increase by 3.7% over FY’24)
- A new limitation on Excess Fund balances being used to offset property taxes, as preferred by Moody’s for maintaining Wilton’s Aaa rating
- Various changes in handling debt service costs
- Higher than anticipated capital expenditures for schools and municipal buildings
Unchanged since the earlier projections, the preliminary BOE budget numbers used in the analysis represent a 5.9% increase over the current year’s budget. The BOF also reviewed 10-year BOE budget history, student enrollment projections, and staffing levels.
“A Sense of What’s Acceptable”
Raimondi said he has concluded that the BOF should provide some guidance.
“I think we should provide guidance,” he said. “It’s hard to put a fine point on what exactly the increases should be for the BOE for BOS… there’s a lot moving parts [and] things are changing.”
“But I do have a sense for what I think the Town would find acceptable or not acceptable from a tax increase perspective,” he continued. “Based on what we know today, I’d want to provide guidance on the mill rate.”
In the ensuing discussion, BOF member Sandy Arkell expressed some hesitation, based in part on the fact that the impact of the 2023 property revaluation process is still an unknown — but potentially significant — factor in the mill rate calculation.
Arkell thought a better approach might be to “go through the exercise of allowing both boards to express their needs, why they’re requesting a certain increase, and as more information becomes available, then we [BOF] can assess the affordability factor once we understand how [property] valuations are coming out.”
Notwithstanding the potential revaluation impact, Vanderslice strongly urged the board to provide specific guidance to both the BOS and BOE.
“It’s really hard for us to put a budget together without guidance,” she said. “We need to hear from you, your reaction to the [projected] 5.4% we’re at. Are you okay with these numbers? We need to know that at the beginning of the process.”
She went on to reveal she was “shocked” in the FY’24 budget process when the BOF cut the BOS budget request. The BOF also cut the BOE budget request, forcing both boards to make adjustments late in the budget process.
“I stand by [the recommendation] to provide mill rate guidance, and not individual board guidance,” Raimondi said. “I think that should provide enough directional help to both boards [BOS and BOE].”
“Saying we’re at an x, y or z mill rate increase, I would hope, does help both boards come up with a budget. We can provide our view of what the taxpayers want right now and then opine later on, when we have more granular data, on the individual board budgets,” Raimondi said.
“I’m generally in favor of setting guidance,” BOF Vice Chair Stewart Koenigsberg said, relying largely on known contractual labor increases that are a significant portion of projected budget increases.
Raimondi’s comments went further, indicating he reads the recent municipal elections as mandate to rein in tax increases.
“I’ll come right out and say it — 5.4% is too much of an increase, by a long shot,” he said. “I do not think that is palatable to the town… the town spoke, and said they wanted conservative leadership at the Board of Finance… I’m speaking on political reality of what I heard from the election and what I heard form the Annual Town Meeting.”
He went on to say that anything over 4% would be similarly unpalatable to most taxpayers.
BOF Chair Mike Kaelin commended Raimondi for “having courage” to speak for a “silent majority.”
“I think what the people in favor of [higher] spending don’t realize is they’re not the majority of people in this town,” Kaelin said. “The loudest voices that are promoting spending don’t represent the silent majority.”
“If you think you’re going to get a 6% spending increase, you’re living in an imaginary world. That’s just not going to happen,” Kaelin said.
“If you want guidance now, 4% is just a fair number to look at from the spending side,” he added.
After further discussions, and with the exception of BOF member Chris Stroup who was not in attendance, the board voted unanimously to offer a 4% mill rate increase as guidance to the BOS and BOE for their budget planning.
“The town spoke, and said they wanted conservative leadership at the Board of Finance” by 4 votes. I feel like I’m going to be repeating this a lot the next 2 years, but it was a 4 vote margin, and with the runner-up somebody who was a pretty vocal opponent of BOF budget cuts last year. They spent a lot of time bragging about vote totals last year when they had the 2021 results – where their margins were much better (in part due to the odd matchup of 1 Democratic 4-year candidate against 3 Republicans) – to refer to, but now that the margins are so narrow, they really look kind of ridiculous continuing to rely on them. (but Bad-Faith Insinuations About What Wilton Voters Want are kind of a specialty of Mr. Raimondi’s)
I do at least appreciate that they’re providing guidance, but I would caution the other two boards not to rely on it; it would be incredibly easy for the BOF to wait until after the other boards have submitted their budgets and then spin whatever results they get from their bogus survey as The Will Of The People supporting a lower number, and insist that thanks to this totally unexpected development, they can now actually only go up 3%. So as always, I would advise the BOE to assume that whatever number they give the BOF – even if it’s within the guidance – is going to have another $1-$2M lopped off of it just so the BOF can claim they’re doing something, and plan accordingly.
Also, as long as we are talking about mandates, the Democrats held their 4-2 majority on the Board of Education by a much larger margin, in a campaign in which the BOE was – by far! – the most aggressively contested and highest-profile race, and in which there was a great deal of discussion of line-item cuts to the BOE budget (an approach repudiated even by one of the Republican BOF candidates).
So the “town spoke” that they wanted to retain the current leadership on the BOE – and its approach to setting budgets – much more loudly than they said anything about the BOF.
Budget should increase no more than the grand list percent increase or the inflation rate which ever is lower.