Reserves, Debt & Revenue Mix
Where the money comes from, what the town owes, and what it has set aside — on the state's uniform numbers for all 169 CT towns.
- AUDITED FY 2013-14 → FY 2022-23
- PULLED 2026-08-10
- These are audited actuals, not the adopted budget. The budget pages elsewhere on this site chart what Colchester appropriated in its general fund. These figures are what was spent and received across all governmental funds, including grant money (ESSER, Title I, IDEA, food service) that the local budget never appropriates. OPM totals therefore run several million dollars above the adopted-budget figures. The two series answer different questions and should not be read as one.
- Coverage runs FY 2013-14 through FY 2022-23. That is the full span OPM publishes town-by-town. FY 2023-24 and FY 2024-25 have not been released.
- OPM compiled the figures itself through FY 2019; from FY 2020 forward towns self-report their own audited data. OPM discloses this change in the dataset description.
- Revaluation moves nominal mill rates. Colchester revalued for FY 2022-23. Where a rate is compared across towns or across years here, the equalized rate is used.
- The one table reads a second OPM dataset. Statutory aid, line by line, is OPM’s estimate of formula grants (
sdcm-adr4), named beside it. It is a different basis from the audited aid-share chart above it and the two are not compared.
Why this page exists
The Budget Trends page already uses this dataset to compare Colchester’s spending growth with its peers. This page covers the parts of the same state dataset the site had not used: where revenue comes from, how much the town holds in reserve, what it owes, and how its spending splits between wages, employee benefits, and everything else.
Two peer groups appear throughout, matching the rest of the site: surrounding towns (the eight towns bordering Colchester) and DRG D (the official 2006 CT SDE District Reference Group Colchester belongs to). Each group is summarized by its median, and Colchester is excluded from its own group medians. Where a chart shows a share or a per-resident figure, each town’s own figure is worked out first and the median is taken across those, so the median line sits at the middle of the towns’ own figures (with an even number of towns, halfway between the middle two).
Where does the town’s money come from?
Where Colchester’s Revenue Comes From
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (property_tax_revenues, intergovernmental_revenues, total_revenues). See the recipe at the bottom of this page.
Which state grants make up that aid, and how much is each one?
What the State Has Appropriated for Colchester, Line by Line
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Source: CT OPM, Estimates of Statutory Aid to Municipalities, sdcm-adr4 — every grant column the dataset publishes (tiered_pilot, motor_vehicle_tax, supplemental_revenue_sharing, mashantucket_pequot_mohegan, supplemental_town_aid, town_aid_road, local_capital_improvement, municipal_grants_in_aid, education_cost_sharing, adult_education, special_education_and_expansion_development, district_repair_and_improvement_project, supplemental_education_aid, district_relief_and_compensatory_use_learning_aid) and its total, packaged as /data/ct_statutory_aid.json. The first total row is added here from the lines; the second is the state’s own total, printed as the check. The state describes the earlier years as actual grant amounts and the latest as an estimate under current enacted law; none is an audited receipt on the town’s books, and estimates are revised. A different basis from the chart above, which is audited intergovernmental revenue and includes federal and other grants this dataset leaves out; the two are not compared.
How much does the town hold in reserve?
Fund Balance — the Town’s Reserves
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_fund_balance and unassigned, each ÷ total_expenditures). On the commonly cited 17% benchmark: the GFOA’s published general recommendation is that a government hold no less than two months — about 17% — of general fund operating revenues or expenditures as unrestricted fund balance. Neither line on this chart is that measure: total fund balance is broader than unrestricted, unassigned is narrower, and the denominator here is all-funds expenditures rather than the general fund. So the chart cannot be read as meeting or missing the figure. It is a general professional guideline, not a state requirement and not a target Colchester has adopted.
How much does the town owe?
Bonded Long-Term Debt per Resident
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (bonded_long_term_debt ÷ population_state_dept_of_public_health). Nominal dollars, not inflation-adjusted.
What share of the budget goes to past borrowing?
Annual Debt Service as a Share of Spending
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (annual_debt_service ÷ total_expenditures).
What has been promised to employees and retirees?
Pension and Retiree-Health Liabilities per Resident
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (net_pension_liability + net_opeb_liability, ÷ population), fiscal year ending 2023. Read this one carefully: these figures reflect the plans a town runs on its own books. Connecticut teachers are in the state-run Teachers’ Retirement System, whose unfunded liability sits with the state and does not appear on any town’s balance sheet, and many towns place other employees in the state MERS plan or in defined-contribution plans. A low number here means a town carries little of this obligation directly — it does not mean no obligation exists for its employees.
What is the money spent on?
Colchester Spending by Function: Wages, Benefits, Everything Else
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators — Uniform Chart of Accounts, e2qt-k238 (salaries_wages, employee_benefits, other), fiscal year ending 2023, function-level subtotal rows only so nothing is double counted.
How much of every pay dollar is benefits rather than pay?
Employee Benefits as a Share of Total Compensation
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators — Uniform Chart of Accounts, e2qt-k238, “Total Expenditures” row per town, fiscal year ending 2023. Towns differ in how they book some costs — a town that pays part of its benefits out of an internal service fund or charges them to a different function can report a different split for the same underlying compensation. Treat differences of a point or two as noise. Two kinds of town are omitted rather than charted at zero: those the source does not report for FY 2022-23 at all, and those whose filing reports wages but no employee-benefit amount at the total level (their benefit costs appear inside another category). Charting the second group at 0% would assert they spend nothing on benefits, which the source does not support, and would pull down the group median. The omitted towns are named in the box above. See also the Insurance and Health Insurance Fund pages.
Where this data comes from, and how to get it again
Everything above is downloaded from Connecticut’s open-data portal. No account, key, or vendor software is needed — the state publishes it through a public API, and the exact files this page reads are checked into the project repository.
| Dataset | ID | Covers | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Municipal Fiscal Indicators: Individual Town Data | ej6f-y2wf |
FY 2013-14 – FY 2022-23, 170 entities | Revenue mix, aid share, fund balance, debt, liabilities |
| Municipal Fiscal Indicators: Uniform Chart of Accounts | e2qt-k238 |
FY 2019-20 – FY 2022-23, by function and department | Wages / benefits / other split |
| Estimates of Statutory Aid to Municipalities | sdcm-adr4 |
the fiscal years OPM publishes, every grantee | Statutory aid, line by line (the one table) |
To pull one town by hand — this returns Colchester’s ten years as JSON in a browser or terminal:
https://data.ct.gov/resource/ej6f-y2wf.json?$where=town='COLCHESTER'&$order=fiscal_year_end
To rebuild every file this page uses, run the two scripts in the repository (Python 3, standard library only):
python Data/fetch_ct_ucoa.py python Data/fetch_ct_adopted_budgets.py
The first re-downloads both fiscal-indicator datasets in full and writes four files: a raw CSV archive of each dataset in Data/ct_ucoa/ alongside a _PROVENANCE.txt recording the pull date and the dataset’s own vintage, plus the two trimmed JSON files this page charts. The second pulls the statutory-aid file, checks every grantee’s lines against the state’s own total before writing anything, and records the result in the file’s metadata. Each script’s header documents every field and every caveat repeated above.
The files this page reads:
ct_ucoa_town_indicators.json ·
ct_ucoa_function_detail.json ·
ct_statutory_aid.json (the statutory-aid table).
Each carries a metadata block with the source URL, the pull date, the dataset’s last-updated date, and the definition of every field. Method notes live in METHODOLOGY.md and data-dictionary.md in the repository.
The data behind these charts
Colchester’s own series behind the charts on this page, as text. Each table names the dataset it came from and the year of every row. The peer towns and group medians the charts also plot are not repeated here; they are in the same source files, linked in the footer.
Reserves and debt by fiscal year
| Fiscal year | Total fund balance | Unassigned fund balance | Bonded long-term debt | Annual debt service |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2013-14 | $5,279,441 | $4,888,372 | $16,278,738 | $2,344,691 |
| FY 2014-15 | $5,724,206 | $5,255,366 | $14,448,121 | $2,318,240 |
| FY 2015-16 | $6,671,056 | $5,711,933 | $12,628,171 | $2,250,840 |
| FY 2016-17 | $7,172,800 | $6,422,633 | $10,765,315 | $2,244,039 |
| FY 2017-18 | $8,406,943 | $6,869,784 | $20,927,467 | $2,236,095 |
| FY 2018-19 | $8,884,784 | $7,815,186 | $26,153,847 | $2,684,056 |
| FY 2019-20 | $9,462,892 | $7,834,677 | $24,339,349 | $2,866,221 |
| FY 2020-21 | $10,035,087 | $7,831,625 | $22,458,863 | $2,791,151 |
| FY 2021-22 | $10,094,724 | $7,960,638 | $21,068,551 | $2,643,705 |
| FY 2022-23 | $11,444,201 | $8,345,852 | $19,611,789 | $2,326,451 |
Unassigned fund balance is the part of reserves not already committed to a purpose. It is a subset of total fund balance, not an addition to it. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town.
Revenue sources by fiscal year
| Fiscal year | Property tax revenues | Intergovernmental revenues | Total revenues |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2013-14 | $36,248,381 | $19,727,811 | $57,442,798 |
| FY 2014-15 | $37,226,671 | $19,483,781 | $58,053,271 |
| FY 2015-16 | $37,712,051 | $19,575,213 | $58,880,023 |
| FY 2016-17 | $38,500,512 | $21,992,787 | $62,116,969 |
| FY 2017-18 | $39,539,056 | $21,032,544 | $62,636,786 |
| FY 2018-19 | $40,028,244 | $16,585,701 | $58,959,293 |
| FY 2019-20 | $40,759,158 | $19,391,531 | $62,500,326 |
| FY 2020-21 | $41,165,635 | $19,045,300 | $62,281,793 |
| FY 2021-22 | $42,473,085 | $18,921,948 | $63,812,318 |
| FY 2022-23 | $42,264,302 | $20,184,098 | $65,878,387 |
Intergovernmental revenue is money from the state and federal governments, education aid included. Property tax and intergovernmental revenue do not sum to total revenues; fees, permits and other local sources make up the rest. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town.
Where Colchester sits among all 169 Connecticut towns, FY 2022-23
| Measure | Colchester | Rank, lowest to highest | Statewide median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total expenditures per resident | $4,076 | 72 of 169 | $4,217 |
| Net current expenditures per pupil (school year 2024-25) | $22,367 | 75 of 169 | $23,247 |
| Equalized mill rate | 19.11 mills | 115 of 169 | 17.18 mills |
| Equalized net grand list per resident | $142,320 | 35 of 169 | $189,668 |
| Total fund balance as a share of total expenditures | 18.1% | 69 of 169 | 19.9% |
| Bonded long-term debt per resident | $1,265 | 61 of 169 | $1,741 |
| Intergovernmental revenue as a share of total revenues | 30.6% | 136 of 169 | 20.5% |
A rank is a position, not a grade. Which end of the list is preferable depends on the measure and on what a reader is trying to find out. Per-pupil spending is the state Department of Education's Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil for the school year in its label, every town read in that same year; a town whose regional district runs every grade carries the district's figure, so the member towns of one district tie. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town. Ranks computed for FY 2022-23 across all 169 towns. Per-pupil spending: CT State Department of Education, Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil (via ct_ncep_towns.json).