Town Finances

What Chester spent, on the audited figures every Connecticut town files with the state.

AUDITED FY 2013-14 → FY 2022-23
ADOPTED FY 2021-22 → FY 2025-26
PULLED 2026-08-10

Total spending $14,905,746 Audited actual, FY 2022-23 — not the adopted budget for that year. Education $10,561,544 · municipal operating $4,344,202. CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf).

Spending per resident $3,963RANK 60 / 169 6% below the statewide median of $4,217 Surrounding-town median $4,059 · DRG E median $4,059, FY 2022-23. CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf).

Education share of spending 70.9%RANK 113 / 169 3.4 percentage points above the statewide median of 67.5% Education expenditures ÷ total expenditures, FY 2022-23. CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf).

Population 3,761 CT Department of Public Health estimate carried in CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), FY 2022-23. −12.9% since FY 2013-14 (4,316).

Before you read these charts.

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.
The adopted budget — The adopted budget is what a town votes to appropriate in its general fund before the year begins. It is a different measure from audited spending, on a different calendar.
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.

Full definitions, what each measure does not support, and the source behind it: How these numbers work.

01 Is the town spending more than it used to?

What the town spent, year by year

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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures, operating_expenditures, total_expenditures). Audited actuals. See the recipe at the bottom of this page.

Notes

Audited year-end expenditures by fiscal year, in millions of dollars. Education expenditures and municipal operating expenditures are the two components of total expenditures, so the full height of each bar is that year’s total spending. Nominal dollars, not adjusted for inflation.

Where these figures come from

The first three charts on this page come from one source: the CT Office of Policy and Management’s Municipal Fiscal Indicators, built from the audited financial statements each town files with the state and cross-walked to Connecticut’s Uniform Chart of Accounts so all 169 towns report the same line items the same way.

They run the fiscal years the state publishes town by town. That is the full span OPM publishes as of the pull date shown at the bottom of this page. The two adopted-budget charts below cover a different, shorter span, stated in their own note.

What this figure includes

These are audited actuals across all governmental funds.

Why this is not a budget

An audited actual is what was spent after a fiscal year closed. An adopted budget is what was appropriated before it opened. They are different measures on different calendars, and this page carries both — in separate charts, never in one series. See audited actuals and the adopted budget.

02 Did education or municipal spending grow faster?

Growth since the first year on record

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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures, operating_expenditures, education_expenditures), each indexed to its own first reported year.

03 What does that come to per resident?

Spending per resident

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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures and operating_expenditures, each ÷ population_state_dept_of_public_health).

Notes

The same expenditures divided by the town’s population that year, split into the education and municipal shares. This adjusts for a changing number of residents but not for inflation.

What this measure does not say

Dividing by population adjusts for a changing number of residents, not for inflation, so this is not a measure of the change in services delivered.

Where this town sits statewide

The strip at the top of this page places the same figure among every Connecticut town the source reports it for: the rank with its denominator, the direction against the statewide median, and one mark per town. A rank is a position, not a grade — which end of the list is preferable depends on the measure and on what a reader came to find out. See statewide ranks.

The rest of this page changes measure: from audited actuals to the adopted budget. The three charts above are audited actuals (ej6f-y2wf). The two below come from a second CT OPM dataset — the summary financial information towns file from their adopted municipal budgets (pcg4-s5rc).

The two measure different things, so their totals differ by definition, and the difference is not overspending and not a saving. Neither is ever summed with, subtracted from, or stacked on the other. See the adopted budget and audited actuals.

04 Can the adopted budget be compared with the audited actuals?

Adopted budget and audited actuals, side by side

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Sources (two, on different bases): adopted — CT OPM Summary Financial Information from Adopted Municipal Budgets, pcg4-s5rc (total_expenditures, by fiscal_period_of_budget, where the budget year ends June 30 of the year shown); audited — CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures). The two fields share a name and do not share a definition.

Notes

Two different measures of the same town, drawn as separate bars and never combined. The adopted bar is total expenditures a town appropriates in its general fund for the year ahead. The audited actual bar is total expenditures across all governmental funds at year end. The audited series ends earlier, because audits are filed after a year closes while budgets are adopted before it opens. Nominal dollars, not adjusted for inflation.

Why the audited bar is usually taller

The audited figure counts all governmental funds, including the federal and state grant money — ESSER, Title I, IDEA, food service — that a general-fund budget never appropriates. Counting more funds makes it the larger of the two in most town-years, though not in all of them. Either way the gap between the bars is definitional: it is not overspending and it is not a saving.

Coverage limits

Coverage is the span of budget years the state publishes.

It is a summary, not line items: the state collects one figure for education and one for everything else, so this dataset cannot support a department-level or object-level analysis. And an adopted budget is a plan, not a result — these are the amounts a town budgeted at adoption, not what it ultimately collected or spent.

05 How much of the budget comes out of local property tax?

Where the adopted budget’s revenue was planned to come from

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Source: CT OPM Summary Financial Information from Adopted Municipal Budgets, pcg4-s5rc (property_tax_revenue, revenues_from_state_of_ct, revenues_from_federal, use_of_fund_balance and all_other_revenue, each ÷ total_revenue for the same budget year). Adopted budget only — a different basis from the audited actuals charted earlier on this page.

Notes

Each bar is one adopted budget year, split into the five revenue categories the state collects. Each segment is that category divided by the same year’s total adopted revenue, so every bar totals 100 percent and the years can be compared regardless of budget size. A category the source leaves blank is one the town budgeted nothing in that year, and the categories it does report still account for the full 100 percent.

Use of fund balance

Use of fund balance is a town planning to draw on reserves it already holds rather than raise that amount in tax for the year, which is why it appears on the revenue side of a budget.

State and federal aid

Revenue from the State of Connecticut and from federal sources is money from other governments, education aid included. A town’s share of it reflects state and federal formulas as much as anything the town decides. Shares of the adopted budget only — grant money that never passes through the general fund is not counted here. See state aid.

06 Can I check these numbers myself?

Data & sources

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.

The two datasets on this page

ej6f-y2wf — Municipal Fiscal Indicators: Individual Town Data. One row per town per fiscal year, for all 169 towns. Audited actuals across all governmental funds. Sections 01–04.
pcg4-s5rc — Summary Financial Information from Adopted Municipal Budgets. One row per town per budget fiscal year, for the budget years the state publishes. The appropriated general fund. Sections 04–05.
The two are on different bases and this page keeps them in separate series throughout.

Rebuild it yourself

python Data/fetch_ct_ucoa.py
python Data/fetch_ct_adopted_budgets.py

Python 3, standard library only. Each script re-downloads its own dataset in full and writes that dataset’s raw CSV archive alongside its own _PROVENANCE.txt, recording the pull date and that dataset’s vintage, plus the trimmed JSON this page charts.

The files this page reads: ct_ucoa_town_indicators.json, ct_adopted_budgets.json, and this town’s own context file at /data/towns/<town>/ucoa_indicators.json, which names the town, its fiscal-year span and its peer groups. 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

Chester’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.

Revenue and spending by fiscal year

Revenue and spending by fiscal year for Chester, Connecticut
Fiscal year	Total revenues	Total expenditures	Education expenditures	Operating expenditures
FY 2013-14	$12,832,691	$12,163,571	$8,693,813	$3,469,758
FY 2014-15	$12,560,273	$12,409,189	$8,769,969	$3,639,220
FY 2015-16	$13,033,658	$12,429,308	$8,819,133	$3,610,175
FY 2016-17	$13,429,127	$12,783,901	$9,135,822	$3,648,079
FY 2017-18	$13,728,425	$13,069,999	$9,282,173	$3,787,826
FY 2018-19	$14,291,206	$13,203,284	$9,420,268	$3,783,016
FY 2019-20	$15,057,972	$13,763,450	$10,051,639	$3,711,811
FY 2020-21	$15,269,794	$14,158,557	$10,362,269	$3,796,288
FY 2021-22	$15,971,067	$14,552,988	$10,578,438	$3,974,550
FY 2022-23	$16,299,439	$14,905,746	$10,561,544	$4,344,202

Audited actual spending, not the budget adopted for that year. The two answer different questions and are never added together. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town.

Population and school enrollment by fiscal year

Population and school enrollment by fiscal year for Chester, Connecticut
Fiscal year	Population	Enrollment (average daily membership)
FY 2013-14	4,316	480
FY 2014-15	4,277	459
FY 2015-16	4,255	443
FY 2016-17	4,254	432
FY 2017-18	4,229	432
FY 2018-19	4,213	418
FY 2019-20	3,744	405
FY 2020-21	3,752	408
FY 2021-22	3,757	410
FY 2022-23	3,761	401

Population is the CT Department of Public Health estimate. Enrollment is average daily membership, which runs below an October headcount because it averages across the year. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town.