By Todd Lavieri
This week, the New Canaan Board of Finance passed the FY 2025-2026 budget. This budget now goes to the Town Council for their review, and approval.
When the Board of Finance received the budget from the First Selectman’s office in January, we set three goals to accomplish with our review: one, to reduce the amount paid in taxation by $3 million; two, to reduce the total amount of capital expense by at least $3 million; and three, to reduce the amount of taxpayer-supported capital expense by $1 million. Working collaboratively with each department, we accomplished all three goals.
We reduced the amount raised by taxation by $4.1 million, we cut the capital expense by $4.8 million, and we reduced the taxpayer-supported capital (not bonded), by $1.2 million. Our total town expenses will rise by 3.56%. Of this increase, 94% is driven by contracted increases in salaries and benefits for Town, Police, and Fire department employees and school district teachers, administration and other school-related employees.
In addition to those financial goals, we focused on achieving our overall strategic goals. Those include the funding of all the necessary school needs, full support for our Police, Fire and EMS needs, Health and Human Services, and funding other required Town infrastructure expenses including roads and buildings, and other Town of New Canaan services and support. We also focused on managing our debt and other longer-term financial guidelines and objectives.
We have made many needed capital investments over the past 15 years for our schools, the Town Hall renovation, improvements and repairs for the Waveny House and grounds, annual road repairs and paving, new or improved athletic fields, and a renovated Police Department building among many other investments. We will push hard, starting this year, to go on a Debt Diet so we can absorb our investments, while continuing to pay down our debt on a straight-line basis. The average interest rate we pay on our debt is 3.67% after several refinancings over the past five years, not including our recent offering that we took to market March 5th this year, and closed at 3.34%.
As always, our goal is to challenge and optimize the operating and capital requests in order to represent the taxpayer’s desire for services, with an eye on the impact on taxes. The town residents and taxpayers want as much value for the taxes paid as we can collectively deliver.
As we have discussed over the past few years, our Town financials remain in very good shape.
Highlights from the budget process thus far
As you know, our school district was ranked Number 1 in the State of Connecticut after a steady, decade-long process of climbing up the ladder to reach the top spot. A high-quality, high-performing school district has been a focus for this town for many years, and together with our great administration, terrific teachers, motivated and engaged parents and students, and the support of our taxpayers, we continue to have a great school district. The entire school budget represents 62% of our total budget.
Our Playhouse movie theater won an award for the best refurbished theater in the country. To have a thriving theater, we need to continue to go out and support this great new asset.
Our pensions remain over-funded reflecting the ethical responsibility we have to ensure that our commitments are met, and that the ‘can is not kicked’ down the road penalizing current and future residents and taxpayers. Prudent financial pension management and investment over the past 20 years will be a long-lasting achievement for this town.
Our other assets, parks, roads, and facilities continue to meet the high usage and demands that our residents require. We have a Aaa rating by Moody’s.
Our emergency services including Fire, Police and EMS collectively responded to literally thousands of calls and incidents in the past year.
I could go on – suffice it to say, we strive as a board and as a Town to deliver value and results for every dollar we collect and manage.
I would like to thank all the departments for the work they did to prepare their budgets for our review. And I would like to also thank the hundreds of volunteers in this town who truly help make this town a success. Not just those on the boards and commissions, but the volunteers who help make all of our parks and Town assets including Irwin Park, Bristow Bird Sanctuary, the Powerhouse Theater, the Carriage Barn, and Waveny look so incredible each year. Coaches, C.E.R.T. volunteers, and so many others who volunteer their time, or generously donate their money to invest in maintaining and improving our town, including our Library among many other assets and activities … thank you.
We will continue to monitor any final financial assumptions as this current year ends in June. At that time, we will set the new mil rate and adopt a final 2025-2026 Budget.
