Town of Wilton officials have made the Oct. 1, 2023 grand list of taxable property available to the public. Wilton’s Manager of Assessing and Tax Collection Hollie Rapp provided the information to First Selectman Toni Boucher and other town officials in a letter dated Feb. 22, 2023 that announced her office had finalized the grand list, resulting in an overall increase of 28.47% from 2022.
Boucher provided GOOD Morning Wilton with the official letter in response to a request after she referred to the Grand List in an early version of her Selectman’s message initially sent to residents on Friday, March 8.
The Oct. 1, 2023 Grand List increase reflects both commercial growth and new residential housing and renovations, as well as the recent property revaluation. The change in the revaluation indiciates the considerable change in real estate values in the five years since the last revaluation.
According to Rapp’s letter, real estate and personal property vales increased, while motor vehicle values decreased year-over-year.
While Rapp’s assessor’s letter said her office had ‘finalized’ the grand list totals, the amounts are not completely finalized until the assessment appeals process is concluded at the end of April 2024.
In total, real estate accounts for $5,135,206,174 (90.1%) of Wilton’s overall 2023 net assessment, a 31.16% change ($1,220,118,706) over 2022. The letter did not break out the specific amounts for residential real estate versus commercial real estate.
Personal property assessments increased 21.01% while motor vehicle assessments decreased 3.73%.
Town officials use the grand list as the town’s tax basis in order to calculate the mill rate and set FY 2025 property taxes.
They are already midway into the budget setting process, and have begin plugging in preliminary figures based on proposed budgets from the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Education. Both boards have submitted their requested budgets to the Board of Finance, which will review the budgets, present them to residents at two public hearings, assess input from residents (through the recently released BOF budget survey, emails and other forms of feedback), and potentially ask for revisions before presenting everything to the Annual Town Meeting in May.
There is a preliminary mill rate calculation worksheet (below) that officials are working with. Based on the current Grand List numbers and initial proposed budgets, the FY 2025 mill rate is projected to decrease from 29.3 to 24.12, or a downward change of 17.6% over FY 2024.
The Board of Finance meets with the Board of Selectmen to review the BOS proposed operating budget this evening at 7 p.m. The BOF then has a regularly scheduled meeting set for tomorrow, Thursday, March 14 at 7 p.m.
That mill rate will be approved by the Annual Town Meeting in May.
If I understand the numbers, assessments (i.e., the Grand List) are going up 28.4%, but the mill rate is going down only 17.6%. Taxes (the product of assessment x mil rate) will be going up 10.8%. That’s too much by any reasonable standard and more than twice the 4-5% recently announced. The Assessors report is described as NOT showing the breakdown between commercial and residential assessment changes. Seems to me residents are entitled to know whether they are being taxed disproportionately. On a related note – are the massive housing projects going to bring in enough tax revenue to cover the municipal costs of these large numbers of newcomers?
When it comes to your question about the increased taxes from the new housing vs the increased education costs for educating the new projected students, the answer is no, it is probably not enough. While there may be physical space in the schools for new students, an increase in the number of kids will require new teachers to be hired. The ultimate answer is dependent on what student teacher ratios need to be maintained, what are the variable costs of educating each students, etc.. but the consensus I have heard is that the projected tax revenues will not be sufficient.
I don’t think that’s quite right; you can’t simply subtract one percent from another one, you have to multiply them. 1.284 * 0.8232 = 1.057.
Suppose your house is currently assessed at $1,000,000. At a mill rate of 29.30, your property taxes are $29,300. If it’s now reassessed 28.4% higher – $1,284,000 – then at a mill rate of 24.12, your property taxes would be $30,970. So a 5.7% increase, not 10.8%, pretty much in line with what’s been proposed.
In this analysis the total taxes go up by 5.83 % (136MM/129MM), not 10.8% . And there are some budget cuts that will reduce it further.
Most of he rest of the different between growth of the grand list and the mill rate reduction is that the for the Grand List it’s a percentage of a smaller number, but for the mill rate it’s a percentage of a larger number. e.g if the grand list goes up by 100%, the mill rate would only go down by 50%, but it would be the same amount of tax.
As Mr. Raimondi pointed out earlier, if your house increased in line with the overall increase, your taxes would go up by 5.83%, exactly in line with the budget increase. If your house went up 30% your taxes would increase 7.12%. A 40% rise becomes a 15.4% increase, etc.
The problem is that some homes (like mine) increased by much more than the overall rate (my taxes, for example, will go up 22%). Since people pay taxes out of their income, which doesn’t follow the grand list, this will be a very painful shock to a lot of Wiltonians. Maybe it’s time to change town funding from property taxes to taxes that are based on income.
Peter Squitieri