The town’s projected year-end surplus has more than doubled to better than $1.3 million over the last three months.
“We’ve been looking at an approximate $620,000 surplus. But that number has increased in these last couple of months to $1.3 million,” First Selectman Rudy Marconi said Monday, June 22.
The year-end surplus projects to $1,350,000, according to figures from Town Controller Kevin Redmond.
The projected surplus of $1,350,000 million is a bit over 1% of the $133-million town and school budget for fiscal year 2014-15.
And, the $1,350,000 is a $730,000 increase over the $620,000 surplus Redmond was projecting at the end of March.
Of course, the fiscal year doesn’t close until June 30.
“These are all forecasts,” Redmond warned. “I still don’t know where these numbers are going to land.”
The bulk of the projected surplus — $1,320,000 or the $1,350,000 — is from revenues coming in higher than expected.
“The numbers are strong,” Redmond said. “Taxes continue to be strong. Parks and Rec continues to be strong.”
Taxes
Tax Collector Jane Berendsen Hill said her department expected to finish the year ahead in all its different categories.
“We’ve made our budget for current year taxes already. We’re over for the other categories,” she said.
“I’m just happy I’m over budget on all the categories by now.
“In round millions, my budget for the year was $121 million, and I’ve collected $121.5 million,” she said.
That’s a total of all taxes collected.
The tax collector’s office was able to bring in more than budgeted due to strong showings in areas like prior year collections — back taxes — and also supplemental motor vehicle taxes, which are taxes paid on cars bought after the October close of assessor’s grand list of taxable property.
“Year to date, roughly $1,110,000 in prior year taxes” has been collected,” Hill said, “and the budget for that was $800,000.”
She thought the strong prior year collections had to do with the mortgage holders adjusting to changes in the real estate market.
“I think the banks are on delinquent taxpayers more than in past years,” she said.
“Banks don’t let it go any more. In the booming times the banks didn’t care. They weren’t really at risk because the values keep going up,” she said.
“Now they’re more vigilant about making sure their customers do pay their own taxes and don’t become delinquent.”
The supplemental motor vehicle tax collections are at almost $925,000 for the year.
“The budget was $725,000, and I’m $200,000 over that. That’s a big difference,” Hill said.
“People put off buying cars for years because of the recession. Now we’re seeing more,” she said.
Since the supplemental taxes are based on cars that haven’t been bought at the time the budget’s put together, it’s hard to predict.
“You never know what you’re going to see when you do a budget amount for that,” Hill said.
School spending
On the expense side of the ledger, Redmond reports the Board of Education has done well at holding down costs. He’s projecting the school system’s $85-million budget to come in at $435,000 below what was originally allocated.
“They appear to be very favorable,” he said.
Of course, the schools’ fiscal year isn’t quite over.
“There are some projects that could be done and committed to that would eat away at that,” Redmond said.
Redmond’s projected $435,000 school surplus — calculated in advance of the June 16 Board of Finance meeting — is lower than the latest figure from School Business Manager Paul Hendrickson, who projected a year-end surplus of almost $619,000 in a report at the June 22 school board meeting.
Hendrickson said much of projected school surplus stems from savings on salaries, as some teachers who were expected to be working when the budget was put together ended up taking leaves, and were replaced with less experienced and less costly teachers.
“We’ve had a lot of teachers on unpaid leaves of absence. That reduces our expenses,” he said.
“And, we’ve had very favorable results with our health care benefits. We’ve had lower enrollment than we anticipated.”
This can happen for various reasons. Sometimes employees opt to be covered by their spouse’s health plan. Or, a worker with a family on the health plan might leave and be replaced by someone who’s single and has no dependents.
“Four staff members with family plans is about $100,000,” Hendrickson said.
“And we’ve also shifted our retirees to a Medicare supplement plan, a different plan, which is the equivalent but less expensive,” he said.
“What we did was shop for a good provider for a reasonable price.”
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