Greenwich Budget: Residents May See Slight Property Tax Decrease

GREENWICH, CT — Amid numerous changes to town operations this spring due to the coronavirus, the Board of Estimation and Taxation, the Representative Town Meeting and other Greenwich officials have still been working together to come up with a town budget for the new fiscal year.

BET Chair Mike Mason said the budget is currently in the hands of the RTM, who will make a final decision on it during their June 8 meeting. After they come to a decision, the new budget will go into effect July 1. (To sign up for Greenwich breaking news alerts and more, click here.)

Currently, the proposed budget stands at $448.38 million which was modified by the BET from the budget committee's original proposal of $459.88 million, Mason said.

That number is still up about $4.2 million from the current budget of $444.16 million, Mason said. He cited contractual obligations to fund benefit packages, such as pension, healthcare and insurance policies, as a reason for the slight increase.

"So when people [say] Greenwich is doing a flat budget, that's not true," Mason said in a phone interview with Patch, "we're going up $4.2 million."

According to Mason, the budget committee originally proposed about a 1.4 percent mill rate increase.

"But...the residents have to pick up about another 1 percent in other fees for trash outside of their mill rate," Mason said. "If you add those two together, we anticipated...the cost of living in the town and having a business and property in town was going to go up about 2.5 percent. The trash thing is really confusing a lot of people right now."

Mason said the new mill rate will be 11.59 if the budget remains unmodified by the RTM. While the current mill rate is 11.682, the town has also implemented a trash tipping fee, which he said is anticipated to bring in about $3.5 million from inhabitants.

That anticipated $3.5 million is just about equal to a 1 percent mill rate increase, Mason said.

He also noted residents' property taxes bill will be "slightly lower," however the trash tipping fees would be also be introduced and paid separately, either to a resident's trash hauler or at the town transfer station.

According to Mason, the Board of Education's operating budget is currently at $163.36 million, which was brought down from the $166.43 million budget originally requested by the school board.

Kathleen Stowe, who chairs the Board of Education's budget committee, said the $3 million reduced by the BET was intended to cover "increased contractual costs for the district," such as salary increases and transportation expenses.

"On the school side, we are rolling up our sleeves to do our part," Stowe said in an email to Patch. "The superintendent [Toni Jones] and her staff are working diligently to find savings and efficiencies that will have the least impact on the classroom, and that will continue to be analyzed."

She also said the committee was meeting with the superintendent to review different options and would provide updates to the board.

While crafting a town budget is never an easy task, this year's process was unique in that much of the work on it over the past few months had to be done remotely.

According to Mason, the BET's budget committee was just finishing up work on the budget in March when everything in town began shutting down due to the virus.

"We all had to adapt to phone call [and electronic] meetings," Mason said in an interview with Patch, "that was a lot of work, [but] I think we're all getting really good at it."

Stowe said the virus created a "unique situation" for school board members as they worked to on the budget and each day has presented a new set of challenges.

"We're all learning to make use of newer technologies like videoconferences," Stowe said, "and I've been excited to see how quickly the various town boards have been able to adapt and, therefore, communicate. Flexibility and understanding is key to our response."