Tax Outlook

What is already in the record that will push on a Westbrook tax bill: the revaluation ahead, the tax base against what the town collects, the state aid already appropriated, and the town’s own recent budget growth.

Before you read these charts.

Revaluation — Every Connecticut town revalues its property on a five-year cycle. When values rise, the grand list grows and the posted mill rate steps down — even if the town collects exactly the same amount of tax.
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.
Mill rate — A mill is $1 of tax per $1,000 of assessed value. Connecticut assesses property at 70% of market value, so a posted rate is not comparable between towns.
The grand list — The grand list is the assessed value of all taxable property in a town. It is dated October 1 and pays for the fiscal year starting the following July, so it always runs a year ahead of the budget it funds.
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.
Equalized mill rate — The equalized rate restates a town's tax levy against the market value of its property. It is the rate that can be compared between towns and across a revaluation; the posted rate cannot.

10 terms bear on this page; the 6 most used are above. Full definitions, what each measure does not support, and the source behind it: How these numbers work.

Nothing on this page is a forecast, and none of it adds up. Each section takes one thing already in the public record and asks what it would do to a bill on its own, holding everything else still. Real bills move for all of these reasons at once, plus a budget nobody has adopted yet. Stacking them into a single number would produce a figure no source supports, so this page does not.

Estimate future property tax bills

Bill scenarios need the town's dated grand list, rates and adopted budget. Loading data...

Sources: OPM adopted budgets, mill rates, grand lists, sales ratios, revaluation schedules and statutory aid estimates. Budget changes are applied proportionally to the baseline rate-derived levy. Vehicle rates are solved separately. All amounts are nominal dollars.

Assumptions

This is a planning scenario, not an adopted future bill or a calibrated prediction. The lower and higher columns change annual spending growth by one percentage point; they are not confidence limits.

Assessments stay at the baseline until the first scheduled revaluation takes effect in bills, normally two fiscal-year labels after its grand-list year. At that reset, measured class drift and your additional housing-market assumption apply. No second reset is modeled.

Federal and other revenue stay flat, and collection performance is held unchanged. Reserve use is the entered dollar amount each future year. No new construction or change in vehicle and equipment totals is assumed. State-aid estimates are shown separately because they do not cover exactly the same revenue as the adopted budget.

The home is assumed to move with its residential class. These estimates exclude individual exemptions, credits, special-district bills and local assessment exceptions. A property that differs from its class can have a different result.

How far have assessments drifted from what property sells for?

Assessment drift since the last revaluation

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Source: CT OPM Equalized Net Grand List by Town (8rr8-a322), fields residential_ratio and cip_ratio, packaged as /data/ct_revaluation.json by Data/fetch_ct_revaluation.py. cip_ratio covers commercial, industrial and public-utility property together. The statewide line is the median of every town’s own residential ratio in that grand list year; this town is excluded from it. Ratios are keyed to the October 1 grand list year on the axis, not to a fiscal year. A ratio is measured from the sales that happened, so in a small town, or a class with few sales, it rests on very few transactions and OPM publishes no count of them here. Ratios outside 10–200 are treated as too thin to stand for a whole class and are not plotted.

Notes

Shared chartThe same measure, on the same statewide data, published on every Connecticut town’s page — so this town’s figure can be read against any other’s. See the chart catalog.

A sales ratio is assessed value as a percentage of market value, measured by CT OPM from the sales that actually took place in that town and that class of property. Connecticut’s statutory target is 70%: a class sitting below the target line is assessed at less than 70% of what it sells for, and the town’s next revaluation puts it back on 70. Between revaluations the lines fall away from the target as the market moves and assessments hold still; in a revaluation year OPM files the ratio as exactly 70, which is the step back up visible in the line. The distance from the target line is the size of the step the next revaluation applies — and homes and commercial property drift at their own rates, which is what changes each one’s share of the tax base when the reset comes.

What a sales ratio is, and is not

A ratio is measured, not a judgment about the town. Assessments drift because the market moves and the law resets them on a cycle, not because a town did or failed to do anything; every Connecticut town’s ratio moves the same way between its own revaluations.

What would the drift already measured do to a bill, with the levy held flat?

What that drift would do to a bill, with the levy held flat

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Source: CT OPM Equalized Net Grand List by Town (8rr8-a322) for the class assessed values (residential_net, apartments_net, cip_net, vacant_net, land_use_net, ten_mill_net, total_personal_property_mvpp) and the sales ratio each carries; CT OPM Revaluation Years by Town, 2023–2037 (2se9-jnuq) for the scheduled year — both packaged as /data/ct_revaluation.json by Data/fetch_ct_revaluation.py. Each real-property class is stepped by 70 ÷ its own sales ratio; motor vehicle and personal property are carried unchanged. The bill change is the class assessment factor times the property-rate factor. The new property rate preserves the levy with vehicle revenue calculated separately using matching-year OPM mill rates (emyx-j53e) and net vehicle assessments (webp-fgt3). Vehicle rates cannot exceed 32.46 mills or an already lower published vehicle ceiling; special-district rates are excluded. Peer and statewide bars are the median of each town’s own figure computed the same way; this town is excluded from every median it is compared against. The schedule is the schedule as published, and revaluations do move — the legislature deferred several in 2020.

Notes

Shared chartThe same arithmetic, on the same statewide data, published on every Connecticut town’s page. See the chart catalog.

A revaluation does not raise the levy. The town still collects what its adopted budget requires, so when the grand list steps up the mill rate steps down by about as much. What a revaluation changes is each class’s share of the list: a class that drifted further than the town average pays a larger share afterwards, and a class that drifted less pays a smaller one. Motor vehicles and personal property are valued or declared every year, so a revaluation does not reset them and they dilute the step. The bars put every class change through that arithmetic and report what is left — the change in a bill for a property that moved exactly with its own class, with the levy held flat.

This is a measurement carried forward, not a forecast. The drift is already in the record; the flat levy is an assumption, stated so the redistribution can be seen on its own. Four things it cannot know: the market keeps moving after the last measured grand list year, so a town revaluing later faces a larger step than this; the levy is set by a budget nobody has adopted yet; every figure is a class average, so a property that moved differently from its class moves differently from this; and a town that has just revalued shows no drift, because it has not had time to accumulate any.

When the last revaluation came, which homes went up most?

What the last revaluation did, home by home

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Source: CT OPM parcel and CAMA data — i7xw-titi, pqrn-qghw and rny9-6ak2 — reduced to revaluation_detail.json by Data/fetch_ct_cama.py. Each property is matched to itself across the revaluation using the identifier named below, and the figure is the change in its assessment. Homes are sorted by what they were assessed at before the reset and cut into ten equal groups; each bar is the median change within its group. A property counts only where it is a home in both files, and new construction is excluded by year built, because a house that did not exist before did not have its assessment reset. Which towns can be measured this way is decided by Data/check_cama_coverage.py and recorded in Data/cama_coverage.json.

Notes

Shared chartThe same measurement, on the same statewide parcel files, published for every Connecticut town whose records support it. See the chart catalog.

This is a record, not a projection. The other revaluation charts on this site carry drift forward on a stated assumption. This one does not assume anything: both numbers behind every bar are assessments the town actually filed, before and after. It measures assessments and not bills. A bill also needs the mill rate, which a budget sets, and no budget is in this file. The break-even is the bridge between the two: a home that rose by more than the break-even pays a larger share afterwards, one that rose by less pays a smaller share, and that holds before any budget change is added on top.

Every bar is a median within its group. Half the homes in a group moved more than its bar and half moved less, and a property that moved differently from its group moved differently from this chart. The spread inside each group is real and is not drawn here.

Why a revaluation moves some bills and not others

A revaluation does not decide how much a town collects; the budget does. It decides how the total is divided. When every assessment is reset at once, a home whose value ran ahead of the town’s average takes a larger share of the same total, and a home that lagged takes a smaller one. That is why a falling mill rate is not a tax cut and a rising assessment is not automatically a larger bill.

Did the reset land differently on different kinds of home?

The same revaluation, by kind of home

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Source: the same CT OPM parcel and CAMA files and the same matched properties as the chart above, grouped by the property type the town’s own assessor recorded rather than by any category imposed here. Type labels vary between towns and are normalized by Data/cama_use.py. A type is shown only where at least 20 matched homes carry it, so a handful of properties never becomes a published median. Towns that file every dwelling without a type do not carry this chart at all.

Is the tax base growing as fast as what the town collects?

The tax base against what the town collects

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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), fields equalized_net_grand_list and property_tax_revenues. The base shown is the equalized grand list, OPM’s estimate of everything the town taxes at full market value, and not the assessed list the mill rate is applied to. That choice matters: a revaluation resets assessed values in one step, so a growth rate taken across a revaluation measures the reset rather than the base and can even change its sign. Both series are indexed to their first year so the two rates can be compared; the levels are different quantities and are never plotted on one axis.

Notes

A mill rate is the levy divided by the base. When the base grows faster than the levy the rate can fall while the town still collects more; when the levy grows faster the rate has to rise even if nothing is added to the budget in real terms. Neither line is good or bad on its own. A base growing quickly can mean new construction, or it can mean a housing market that has priced out the people already living there.

The base here is measured at market value rather than at assessed value, because assessed values are reset in one step at each revaluation and a growth rate taken across a reset would measure the reset. The trade is that the mill rate is applied to the assessed list, not this one, so the two lines describe the pressure on a rate rather than computing it.

Why this is not a projection

Both lines stop where the published record stops. Nothing is extended past it here. What the section offers is the relationship the town has actually run at, which is the thing a reader would otherwise have to assume.

What is the state sending, and is it changing?

State aid already appropriated

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Source: CT OPM statutory formula aid by town (sdcm-adr4), packaged as /data/ct_statutory_aid.json. These are appropriated figures for fiscal years the town has not finished billing, which is what makes them forward-looking; they are what the legislature has enacted, not what a town has received. Appropriations are revised, and a mid-year rescission or a new budget can change them. Education Cost Sharing is shown apart from the rest because it is the largest single grant and moves on its own formula.

If spending keeps growing at the recent rate, what does that cost?

Recent budget growth, carried forward

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Source: CT OPM adopted municipal budgets (pcg4-s5rc), packaged as /data/ct_adopted_budgets.json, with US CPI-U annual averages (/data/us_cpi_u.json) for the inflation comparison. Solid segments are adopted budgets the town actually voted. The dashed segment is the same series continued at the town’s own average annual rate over the adopted years shown, and it is an illustration of that rate rather than anything the town has decided. CPI-U is a consumer price index, not a municipal cost index, and government costs have generally run above it.

Notes

The dashed line is arithmetic, not a plan. No town has adopted it, and budgets are decided one year at a time in public. It answers one narrow question: if the recent rate simply continued, where would it land? A town that has just settled a contract, opened a building or lost a grant has every reason to depart from it.

Adopted budgets and audited spending are different numbers

An adopted budget is what a town votes before the year starts. Audited actual spending is what it turns out to have spent. They differ, sometimes substantially, and this site never plots the two as one series. The other pages on this site use the audited figures; this chart uses the adopted ones, because the question is about what a town decides rather than what it ends up doing.