Praising Town Boards for “Working in Harmony,” BOF Sets Mill Rate and Tax Increases to Take to Voters

The Board of Finance had three nights scheduled to deliberate on setting the mill rate and proposed tax increase for FY 2025, but at last night’s meeting (Tuesday, April 2), the BOF members got it wrapped up in under 90 minutes, and still left time to discuss other points.

Their expediency may have been due to ample time BOF members had already spent reviewing proposed budgets in collaboration with the Board of Selectmen and Board of Education. The BOF also credited both other boards with putting significant work into submitting budgets close to its original guidance asking for a mill rate increase of 4%.

By the end of the deliberation meeting, the Board of Finance approved for FY’25 a year-over-year 4% increase in the mill rate to 23.9435 and an overall residential tax increase (property and motor vehicle) of 8.7%. The town’s total tax increase is 5.2%, while residential property taxes alone will increase 11%.

The BOF arrived at those numbers by reducing the proposed overall budget by $440,000 — $300,000 from the Board of Education and $140,000 from the Board of Selectman.

Those are the figures they’ll bring to the Annual Town Meeting on Tuesday, May 7 for voters to consider.

As they finalized the deliberations, the BOF members had high praise for how collaborative the budget process was this year — a stark difference from the oppositional tone felt about last year’s boards during the FY 2024 budget process.

BOF Chair Matt Raimondi summed up the sentiments. “The level of partnership and collaboration, I felt, specifically with the Chair of the Board of Ed Ruth DeLuca and her entire board, with [First Selectman] Toni Boucher and the entire Board of Selectmen. It’s really this has been hard stuff and I wouldn’t say it’s been the most fun because of that, but at the very least if you think we ended it in partnership and did our best with people, so thank you to everybody,” he said.

Survey and Resident Responses

Led Raimondi, board members began by reviewing resident feedback they’ve received over the budget season (since January 2024). Board member Prasad Iyer summarized emails and comments made at public hearings, noting that 64 individuals had reached out in at least one way, with 53 of them providing specific feedback on the budget proposals.

Of those 53 respondents, two-thirds said they supported the Board of Education budget, and one-third reported looking for” efficiency and rethinking of the budgets in some way.”

Raimondi noted that fewer people than last year spoke out at public hearings on the budgets, and “anecdotally” more people reached out to the BOF about FY 2024 budgets than this year.

In contrast more people responded to the online survey on the budget this year than last year by about 40%; in total, 1,129 individuals took the survey. In large part, Raimondi credited the partnership with the BOE and specifically BOE Chair Ruth DeLuca for raising the number of responses by suggesting they ask Wilton residents to answer the survey by issuing a joint press release from both chairs — something Raimondi said “did have a meaningful impact.”

Raimondi later pointed out that the demographic of parents of Wilton students was “oversurveyed”: the survey received responses from a greater proportion of parents with children in Wilton Public Schools (WPS) (48% of survey respondents) than the demographic is represented in Wilton (only 38% of Wilton households have students in the Wilton Schools, per WPS statistics).

Nonetheless, Raimondi said the survey had a 2.9% margin of error and the sample surveyed “was a very good sample.”

[Raimondi also noted that respondents were asked to consider a slightly higher mill rate and property tax increase than what the BOF ultimately considered because at the time the survey was issued in early March, officials hadn’t yet finalized all the elements in the budget analysis. So while survey respondents were asked about a 6.2% Total Town Property Tax increase with a 24.1 mill rate, the final budget that the BOF deliberated on April 2 actually yielded a 5.6% Total Town Property Tax increase and a mill rate of 24.0.]

Here’s what BOF officials learned from survey responses:

• Survey respondents rejected both the proposed budgets and mill rate: 50.5% of all respondents rejected the BOS budget (4.1% increase), 53.3% rejected the BOE budget (4.9% increase), and 60.5% rejected the proposed mill rate (24.1).

• Respondents with children in Wilton Public Schools supported the budgets: 55.1% approved the proposed BOS budget and 61.7% supported the proposed BOE budget. Respondents with no children in WPS weren’t as supportive: less than half of this demographic (44.3%) approved of the BOS budget and only one-third (32.6%) approved of the BOE budget.

• The proposed mill rate received even less support from both demographics overall: 47.1% of respondents with children in WPS were okay with a 24.1 mill rate while only 32.4% of those without children supported that proposed mill rate.

• Perhaps not surprisingly in a difficult financial year when many residents’ taxable property increased in value following the recent revaluation, fewer respondents supported the budgets and mill rate than in past years.
  • the BOS increase received less support this year than the previous two years (from 71% in 2022 to 49% in 2024)
  • the BOE budget increase had the same support as last year (47%) but down from 58% support in 2022
  • The mill rate approval was slightly higher this year than last year, but still less than a majority.

Some other results that Raimondi broke out dug a little deeper into the differences between people with children in WPS versus those without.

“The one interesting thing, and I think it does have some logic to it, is in addition to folks with children in the schools, parents whose children are too young to attend the schools were also more in favor of the Board of Ed budget as well,” he said, adding that while all demographics were relatively opposed on the mill rate, those same parents of students and future students were more accepting of it.

The survey also looked at approval of the budgets and the mill rate based on age.

“My guess is this is highly correlated with whether or not respondents had children in the schools. You see younger folks — not the 26-34, but the 35-54 range — were relatively more in favor of the budgets than other demographics,” he said.

Raimondi’s full presentation is available on the Town Website.

Budget Elements Considered

Turning to the budget, Raimondi did a quick recap on the elements of the budget the BOF members needed to consider to set the proposed mill rate.

Operating Requirements — Total $141,915,056

• Board of Selectmen‘s proposed $35,876,501 budget ($1,402,906 or 4.1% increase)
• Board of Education‘s proposed $93,538,159 budget ($4,356,467 or 4.9% increase)
• Debt service of $9,975,742, kept relatively flat ($15,240 increase or 0.2%)
• Reserves (1% of the elements above) of $1,393,904 ($57,746 increase or 4.3%)
• Tax relief (for the elderly, Wilton’s Volunteer Ambulance and Georgetown’s Volunteer Fire), kept flat over last year at $1,130,750 as voted on by the BOS

Funding Sources — Total $141,915,056 needed

• Revenue other than property taxes: $5,901,152 (4.1% increase)
• The Use of Excess Fund Balance to offset taxes has been eliminated this year, as part of the Town’s new policy and to be in compliance with Moody’s new requirements
• Mill Rate Levy: $136,013,904 (what needs to be raised through taxes to equal the total operating requirement above)

Mill Rate Calculation — 24.0 or 4.3% over FY 2024

• Grand List: $5,701,971,931 (Raimondi noted it includes “about $66.6 million of new development that came online over the past year”
• Collection Rate (assumed): 99.30%,
• Collectible Grand List: $5,662,058,127 (1.2% increase)
• Mill Rate (dividing the Mill Rate Levy by the Collectible Grand List) of 24.0219

The resulting 24.0 mill rate (which Raimondi said took into account the recent revaluation) represented a 4.3% change over last year — higher than the BOF’s original target. “As a reminder, we had a 4% as our guidance on that figure.”

Based on those elements, the overall town property taxes would increase by 5.6%; residents would see an 11.4% residential property tax increase and a combined 9% increase for residential property and motor vehicle taxes.

Board Comments — and Consensus

In their discussion, the BOF members acknowledged the other impacts facing Wilton residents — higher costs of living, increases in property revaluations that mean significant jumps in taxes for most people, and other costs facing the town in the next 10-15 years with building maintenance and renovation needs, among other things.

As each BOF member shared their thoughts, they all were in agreement — the Boards of Education and Selectmen had gotten “within spitting distance” of the proposed budget guidance of a 4% mill rate increase, as Iyer pointed out, and it was unanimous about trimming just enough to get there from 4.3%.

That amount to reduce wound up being $440,000, which the BOF members decided to divide proportionally — $300,000 for the BOE budget and $140,000 for the BOS.

BOF Vice Chair Stewart Koenigsberg complimented the work put in by all three boards — as well as the cooperation and collaboration between everyone. He said the process was much better than in past years “because we’re all singing from the same hymn book.”

“We don’t want to see this overwhelming increase to the taxpayers without at least doing our ‘fair share,'” he said. “Candidly, we’ve had a lot of conversations; Matt’s had conversations with the members of the other boards. [BOE Chair] Ruth [DeLuca] and I have gotten together for coffee a couple of times … So we’re all working towards a common goal. We understand that this is heavy lifting for everyone in the town, but I think everyone’s pitching in … doing what they can to chisel as much as possible without dropping below a threshold, where we don’t think we’re offering exceptional services to the people in this town and to the schools.”

When discussing how to split the $440,000 reduction between the BOS and BOE, Koenigsberg acknowledged that the BOF had “taken a harder line with the Board of Ed [budgets]” in the past, pushing school officials to examine their teacher-to-student ratios. But now, given the headcount cuts made last year in the district, he said he worried “in the opposite direction now” about cutting too deep to the BOE numbers.

“I do worry that we start to fall too low. I think we’ve got to be mindful of that,” he said.

Raimondi wanted residents to know that both the BOS and BOE had worked very hard — and “in harmony” to get their budgets to the 4% guidance they’d received.

“I truly feel like both boards heard us; they did everything in their power to try and meet us there… Just for everyone at home, that’s really hard what both boards have done. As chair and speaking on behalf of the Board [of Finance], I’m very grateful for that,” Raimondi said.

Final FY2025 Mill Rate Calculation, set by the Board of Finance on April 2, 2024: