Spending vs. Peers
How Danbury’s spending has moved against its surrounding towns and its statewide peer group, on one uniform set of numbers.
- AUDITED FY 2013-14 → FY 2022-23
- PULLED 2026-08-10
- Audited actuals — Audited actuals are what a town actually spent and received across all its governmental funds, as reported after the year closed. They are not the budget the town adopted.
- Peer groups — A peer group is a tool for a specific question, not a verdict. A group that is right for comparing school spending can be wrong for comparing snow plowing. Where two defensible groups disagree, this site shows both.
- Academic growth (percentage of target achieved) — Growth measures how far a student moved in a year toward a target set from their own prior score; the achievement index measures where students ended up. Growth depends less on family circumstances than the level does — less, not not at all — so this site shows it first.
- Medians, and why the town is left out of its own — A group is summarized by its median — the middle town, not the average. The subject town is excluded from its own group median, because a town cannot be part of the benchmark it is measured against.
- Per-pupil spending — There is more than one per-pupil number, and they are not interchangeable. The town pages and the statewide rankings print the state Department of Education's Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil; a figure divided from OPM spending and average daily membership, which this site used until September 2026, is a different measure.
Full definitions, what each measure does not support, and the source behind it: How these numbers work.
- Coverage. This page covers every fiscal year the state publishes town by town; the exact span appears here once the data loads.
- Responsibility for the underlying figures changed partway through the period covered: the state compiled the earlier years itself, and in the later years municipalities self-report their own audited data.
01 Which towns is this one being measured against?
Who this town is being compared with
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02 Has this town’s spending grown faster than its neighbors’?
Total Spending Growth — Surrounding Towns
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures), each town’s series divided by its own first-year value. The dashed median line is the median of the individual index lines shown behind it — the middle town’s cumulative growth in each year, not the growth of any one town across all years.
03 And against the towns the state calls its demographic peers?
Total Spending Growth — District Reference Group Peers
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures), indexed per town. Group membership: CT State Department of Education District Reference Groups, 2006 assignment.
04 How did the town-government side of the budget grow?
Municipal (Non-Education) Spending Growth vs. Peer Medians
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (operating_expenditures). Each town’s own series is indexed to 100 at its first reported year; the two dashed lines are the median taken across the peer towns’ indexed series, year by year. Group medians exclude the subject town.
05 How did the school side grow?
Education Spending Growth vs. Peer Medians
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures). Each town’s own series is indexed to 100 at its first reported year; the two dashed lines are the median taken across the peer towns’ indexed series, year by year. Group medians exclude the subject town. Towns that belong to a regional school district book their education costs differently from towns that run their own schools; that affects comparisons on this measure.
06 What is the level, rather than the growth?
Per-Resident Spending Over Time
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures ÷ population_state_dept_of_public_health). Nominal dollars, not inflation-adjusted. Population is the CT Department of Public Health estimate carried in the same dataset.
07 Where does this town sit among its peers?
Per-Resident Spending, Latest Reported Year
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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures ÷ population_state_dept_of_public_health), most recent reported fiscal year. Towns the source does not report for that year are omitted rather than charted at zero. Differences between towns reflect what services a town delivers directly as well as how much it spends: education arrangements, regional districts, fire and ambulance service, water and sewer authorities all vary from town to town.
The data behind these charts
Danbury’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.
Who Danbury is compared with
- Surrounding towns 5 towns
-
Bethel · Brookfield · New Fairfield · Redding · Ridgefield
The towns that share a border or an immediate labor market. Right for regional context; they are not matched on size or wealth.
- District Reference Group H 8 towns
-
Ansonia · Derby · East Hartford · Meriden · Norwalk · Norwich · Stamford · West Haven
The CT State Department of Education grouping of school districts on family income, parent education, family structure and enrollment. Last assigned in 2006, and built for education questions rather than town-side spending.
- Municipal peers 12 towns
-
Southington · West Hartford · Wallingford · Cheshire · Newington · Norwalk · Wethersfield · Groton · New Milford · Windsor · Newtown · Enfield
Town-side spending, debt, reserves, and tax comparisons. Chosen by a published formula over state data rather than by hand: the nearest towns by standardized distance on the stated variables.
- School peers 12 towns
-
West Hartford · Stratford · Southington · Bristol · Wallingford · Cheshire · Wethersfield · Newington · Windsor · Norwalk · New Milford · Newtown
Education spending comparisons. Chosen by a published formula over state data rather than by hand: the nearest towns by standardized distance on the stated variables.
Danbury is left out of each list above, because a town is never part
of the benchmark it is measured against. Group medians elsewhere on the site
exclude it the same way.
Sources: surrounding towns and District Reference Group are
the published groupings; the peer sets are built by a stated formula over CT
OPM data (Data/build_peer_sets.py), not selected by hand.
Spending per resident by fiscal year
| Fiscal year | Total expenditures | Population | Per resident |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2013-14 | $239,563,620 | 83,784 | $2,859 |
| FY 2014-15 | $246,091,312 | 84,657 | $2,907 |
| FY 2015-16 | $254,116,299 | 84,992 | $2,990 |
| FY 2016-17 | $267,936,498 | 85,246 | $3,143 |
| FY 2017-18 | $273,694,677 | 84,730 | $3,230 |
| FY 2018-19 | $264,455,376 | 84,694 | $3,122 |
| FY 2019-20 | $276,919,891 | 86,570 | $3,199 |
| FY 2020-21 | $277,496,176 | 86,759 | $3,198 |
| FY 2021-22 | $290,240,088 | 86,967 | $3,337 |
| FY 2022-23 | $296,571,070 | 86,124 | $3,444 |
Per resident is this town's own spending divided by its own population for the same year. It is not one group median divided by another. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town.
Where Danbury sits among all 169 Connecticut towns, FY 2022-23
| Measure | Danbury | Rank, lowest to highest | Statewide median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total expenditures per resident | $3,444 | 15 of 169 | $4,217 |
| Net current expenditures per pupil (school year 2024-25) | $17,436 | 3 of 169 | $23,247 |
| Equalized mill rate | 14.93 mills | 45 of 169 | 17.18 mills |
| Equalized net grand list per resident | $180,277 | 69 of 169 | $189,668 |
| Total fund balance as a share of total expenditures | 21.1% | 93 of 169 | 19.9% |
| Bonded long-term debt per resident | $1,609 | 74 of 169 | $1,741 |
| Intergovernmental revenue as a share of total revenues | 20.6% | 86 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).