With the caveat that all numbers are subject to change, the Board of Finance heard preliminary Fiscal Year 2027 budget forecasts Tuesday night, Oct. 14, from both the Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen.
Each board is currently projecting a 4.1% increase in its respective budget for FY 2027. With these increases and other tentative assumptions, the BOF is projecting a 3.49% increase in the mill rate to 25.25.
“It does feel on the high end,” BOF Chair Matt Raimondi said of the potential mill rate.
“We can discuss that more at our November meeting,” he said, at which time the BOF will respond to the other boards with its suggested budget guidance.
Meanwhile, despite alerting the BOF to a dramatic drop in enrollment numbers, Superintendent Kevin Smith presented a tentative $100,935,938 BOE budget for FY ’27, and First Selectman Toni Boucher presented a tentative $38,648,104 BOS budget.
Numbers & Nurses
With the Finance Department experiencing a degree of chaos over the past year, it’s unclear exactly how reliable the $38.7 million suggested budget put forth by the Boucher is.
While Boucher stated that she and outgoing Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker worked hard to draft the projections — even meeting with each department head to arrive at figures, she said — some BOF members indicated they were merely estimates based on historic increases.
“So you’re doing trend lines,” BOF member Sandy Arkell observed.
“Isn’t that what a guideline is?” Boucher said.
Boucher stressed that part of the question centered on current salary and benefit negotiations between the town and four different unions.
“All four union contracts are being negotiated right now,” Boucher said, with the results of those negotiations poised to push the numbers in unknown directions.
Boucher also pinpointed the $970,000 cost for school nurses that is part of the BOS budget and has been for several years.
“This may present an opportunity for the town to save substantial money,” Boucher said, were they to move that item over to the school budget.
Asked exactly how it would save the town money overall, Boucher said that since the school controls that contract, they could negotiate a better rate. She also said there were potential services that the town was paying for that the nurses were not providing, thus possibly lowering the amount.
“We have to look into seeing if we’re being charged for services we’re not using or needing at this point,” Boucher said.
BOF member Rudy Escalante said he still didn’t see how the town would be saved money with this change.
Raimondi concurred.
“I think it’s budget geography,” he said, referring to the idea of moving the line item from one budget component to the other. “I think you’re right, Rudy.”
Boucher noted other issues that were driving costs, including escalating legal fees and, most recently, bathroom repair issues in the Town Hall Annex.
“It is a serious issue that may take some costs to repair,” she said, noting the building was originally a Department of Public Works garage and is showing wear.
“Additionally, we do have needs in the maintenance department,” Boucher said. “Well, we don’t have a maintenance department, for one thing. That came up last year and was removed.”
Raimondi asked what the risks were to this budget assumption that could make it potentially higher.
“I think the only real risk is what the state might do to us in healthcare, but remember I built in increases to all the benefit lines,” Boucher said. “So I’m gonna be optimistic and say we’re gonna do better than we think, maybe, in our negotiations … and that’s going to affect every single line.”
“I’m hoping that this is the worst-case scenario,” she said, “but I’m careful not to, y’know, say that too loudly.”
Unanticipated Enrollment Drop
Though he gave a rosy presentation on the quality of his school district, and emphasized the goods that come with its funding, Smith confessed that they’ve seen a dramatic drop in enrollment this fall.
“Current enrollment is a bit of a puzzle this year,” Smith said. “We’re about 100 students below our projection.”
The medium projection estimate for this school year had been 3,712 students, based on the work of MB Planning Group, LLC, which had estimated a rise over last year’s enrollment total of 3,699.
“I’ve been looking at this,” Smith said. “The cohort, year over year is stable, but the anticipated growth that we’ve seen, particularly in the primary grades, didn’t materialize.”
He said that a representative of MB Planning Group would be speaking about the issue at the Thursday, Oct. 23 BOE meeting.
“We’ll get, hopefully, a thorough explanation, but that’s something we weren’t anticipating,” Smith said.
Risks
Smith said that some of the risks being faced in the budget were ones already familiar to the BOF, including the high cost of outplaced students with special needs. He said that two currently outplaced students were costing the district more than $250,000 each for their education.
“Our facilities, as you’ve heard before, remain a concern,” he said, noting the possibilities of unexpected repairs.
He said the staffing numbers will be remaining stable at this time, with a potential to hire paraprofessionals as needed an outside possibility.
“I think we’re going to be able to manage with what we have … If we do get new staff proposals, we’re just going to try to manage it,” Smith said.