How wages, Social Security benefits, and town spending have changed over the past two decades
Discussions about town spending often come down to one simple question: is the budget growing faster than residents' ability to pay?
This page puts five trend lines on the same chart so you can answer that for yourself. Wage growth (Connecticut median household income) and Social Security benefits (cumulative annual COLA) represent two ways household income has changed. Inflation (CPI-U) tells you how the cost of everything else has moved. And Colchester's total adopted budget, education budget, and town-side budget show what local government spending has done in the same window.
Every line is indexed to 100 in FY 2007-08 (the earliest year for which we have all six series). Numbers above 100 mean cumulative growth since the base year. This is a comparison page, not a calculator — there are no inputs, just the data.
How fast has the budget grown against wages and prices?
Sources: Colchester adopted budget books (FY 07-08 → FY 24-25) · CT median household income — U.S. Census Bureau via FRED MEHOINUSCTA646N · Social Security COLAs — SSA.gov · CPI-U — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Each tile shows total cumulative growth from FY 2007-08 through FY 2024-25 (or latest year with data). "Real" rows are inflation-adjusted using CPI-U.
And in each single year?
Sources: Colchester adopted budgets · CT median household income (FRED MEHOINUSCTA646N) · Social Security COLAs (SSA.gov) · CPI-U (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Have incomes moved with the budget?
Statewide Connecticut median household income from the U.S. Census Bureau via FRED. Colchester's median is typically 20-30% higher in absolute dollars, but the growth pattern tracks the state closely.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau / FRED series MEHOINUSCTA646N · Colchester adopted budget books FY07-08 through FY24-25
Why do those two readings point in different directions?
Per-resident: total adopted budget ÷ population, ÷ CT median income (FRED MEHOINUSCTA646N). Median home: median sale price × 0.7 × mill rate ÷ 1,000, ÷ CT median income. Same source data as the two charts above; this view simply overlays them.
What makes a homeowner’s bill move?
Over the 18 years the tax bill on a median Colchester home roughly doubled, while CT median income grew about +55%. The bill outran income, so it now claims a larger share of a typical paycheck. The chart below shows why the bill doubled: it is the product of two things that both rose — the median home value (about +60%) and the mill rate (about +25%). Multiplied together (1.60 × 1.25) they give the roughly +100% jump in the bill. The dashed line marks general inflation (CPI), and the green bar is income.
How much of this is just inflation? Most of it. General prices rose about +51% over the period (CPI-U), so a bill that kept pace with inflation would have risen by about half on its own. The dashed line on the chart marks that baseline; the dollar bars rising above it outpaced inflation. Their real, above-inflation growth — smaller than the visible gap, which is measured in percentage points, not real growth — works out to about +32% for the tax bill, +6% for home values, and +2% for income — while the town’s adopted budget fell roughly 12% in real terms (the +33.5% nominal increase trailed the +51% in prices; see the "Real" tab on the first chart). So the real, above-inflation rise in a homeowner's bill is not coming from the town spending more in real dollars. It comes from two things: home values rising a little faster than inflation, and — the larger piece — the local property-tax share of the budget climbing as state aid declined slightly in nominal terms (next two sections). Adjusting for inflation separates the part that is simply the cost of money changing over those 18 years from the part that reflects a genuine shift in who pays.
The common objection: Connecticut revalues every five years and the process is roughly revenue-neutral — so shouldn't a higher home value be cancelled by a lower mill rate? A revaluation only redistributes a fixed levy across the town; it does not shrink the levy. The total to be raised is set by the budget's local-funding needs, not by home values. So rising values do not lower anyone's total bill — they shift the load toward whichever properties appreciated most. Homes appreciated, and homes are about 74% of Colchester's grand list, so homeowners as a class absorbed the shift. The mill rate did not fall to offset values because the levy itself grew about +61% over the period (the budget grew +33.5%, but state ECS aid fell (about $13.0M → $12.0M, −7% nominal), so the locally-funded share climbed from 60% to 73% — see the next two sections). The effect is sharpest for fixed-income retirees: home values rose +60%, but Social Security COLAs tracked CPI (about +51%), so the bill outgrows the income meant to cover it.
Growth figures computed FY 2007-08 → FY 2024-25 from the same series used above: median sale price (CT OPM Real Estate Sales), mill rate (Colchester adopted budgets), tax bill = price × 0.7 × mill rate ÷ 1,000, and CT median household income (FRED MEHOINUSCTA646N). Inflation baseline and real (inflation-adjusted) figures use cumulative CPI-U (BLS annual averages), the same series used elsewhere on this page. Residential share of the grand list (~74%): CT OPM Net Grand List by Town (dataset webp-fgt3 on data.ct.gov), residential real estate ÷ total net taxable grand list, FY 2024-25 — see the grand-list chart below.
How is the tax base split between homes and business?
Sources: CT OPM Net Grand List by Town, dataset webp-fgt3 on data.ct.gov · pre-2011 figures estimated by category ratio from FY10-11 baseline.
Which kinds of property carry the levy?
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Source: CT OPM Tax Levy by Municipality and Special Tax District (he33-brru), fields net_real_property_tax_levy, net_personal_prop_tax_levy, net_motor_vehicle_tax_levy and supplemental_mv, from data.ct.gov, packaged in /data/ct_equalized_rates.json. Each share is that figure divided by the four summed, so the supplemental motor-vehicle bills, which the state reports beside the town’s total rather than inside it, are counted with the rest. The statewide median is taken one property type at a time across every town with a breakdown that year, this town included, so the four medians need not add to exactly 100. A year is left blank where the state’s town-wide row was a zero, a blank or a partial filing (a consolidated city billing most of its levy through internal districts); in the payload the town’s total for such a year is filled from OPM’s adopted-budget summary (pcg4-s5rc), which has no breakdown. Where the state’s three property-type figures do not add to its own total for a town-year, the payload lists the row and the shares here are taken over the three figures themselves. Special taxing districts are not included.
Has the tax base kept up with prices?
Approach 7 — the tax base against prices. The grand list is the assessed value of everything in town that can be taxed. The mill rate is laid against it, so it is the base the property tax levy is raised from — not the whole budget, which also draws on state aid, federal pass-throughs and fees (see the levy-share section above). The bars below stack the five assessment classes CT OPM publishes, all indexed so the first grand list equals 100. The dashed gray line is general inflation (CPI-U) over the same calendar years, also starting at 100. Where the top of the stack sits below the line, the base grew slower than prices; where it sits above, faster.
How to read this, and how not to. The grand list is not indexed to inflation and is not designed to track it: an assessment follows the property market as of the revaluation date, and property values and consumer prices are different things that can move apart for years. Two things follow. First, a gap in either direction is a fact about the two series, not by itself evidence about any town decision. Second, the size of the grand list does not by itself set what the town collects — the levy is set by the adopted budget, and the mill rate moves to raise it against whatever the list happens to be. A bigger list means a lower rate for the same levy, and a smaller one a higher rate. What this chart adds is a sense of how much assessed value stands behind each budget dollar over time, and when that changed.
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Sources: CT OPM Net Grand List by Town (dataset webp-fgt3 on data.ct.gov), as packaged in /data/ct_grand_list_classes.json — fields residential, commercial, land, motor_vehicle, personal and class_total. Residential = 100 Residential + 800 Apartment; commercial = 200 Commercial + 300 Industrial + 400 Public Utility; land = 500 Vacant Land + 600 Land Use + 700 Ten Mill Land. The index is built on class_total (the five classes summed), which is gross of the exemptions net_grand_list already subtracts; on net_grand_list the same window is +36.5% rather than +37.1%, so the comparison against CPI is unchanged either way. These are grand list years, not the fiscal years used elsewhere on this page: a grand list dated October 1 of year Y funds the fiscal year beginning July 1 of Y+1, so GL 2024 pays for FY 2025-26. The OPM class series begins at GL 2011, so this chart does not reach back to FY 2007-08 like the charts above. Inflation is BLS CPI-U, US city average, all items, not seasonally adjusted, series CUUR0000SA0 (data.bls.gov), annual averages only, as packaged in /data/us_cpi_u.json by Data/fetch_cpi_u.py. The index is built from the published index levels rather than from the annual percentages used by the charts above, so this figure and the one on the shared town pages come from one arithmetic. CPI-U measures prices paid by urban consumers and is not a municipal cost index; the government-specific indices this site also cites have run above it, which would widen any shortfall. Revaluation years and the five-year cycle: CGS §12-62 / §12-62a, with Colchester’s cycle recorded in data-dictionary.md.
What does the same tax base look like at market value?
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Sources: assessed figures from CT OPM Net Grand List by Town (dataset webp-fgt3 on data.ct.gov), field Total Net Grand List, as packaged in /data/ct_grand_list_classes.json; market-value figures from CT OPM Equalized Net Grand List by Town (dataset 8rr8-a322), field equalized_grand_list, as packaged in /data/ct_equalized_rates.json. Both are keyed to the October 1 grand list year on the axis, not to a fiscal year: a grand list dated October 1 of year Y funds the fiscal year beginning July 1 of Y+1. This chart is built on net_grand_list, which subtracts the exemptions class_total is gross of, so it is a different measure of the list from the index in the chart above. Coverage: the machine-readable OPM files begin with the October 1, 2011 grand list, so this chart covers 14 grand lists rather than the full period the charts higher up the page reach; earlier grand lists are published only in OPM’s printed Municipal Fiscal Indicators books. OPM publishes no net taxable total for the 2012 grand list year for any Connecticut town, and that year is drawn as a gap rather than filled with an estimate. Neither series is adjusted for inflation; the chart above is the comparison against prices. Revaluation years: CGS §12-62 five-year cycle, with Colchester’s cycle recorded in data-dictionary.md.
Who lives in the town’s households?
Why this chart exists. School enrollment in Colchester is down about a third since FY 2008-09, and that is sometimes repeated as the town having lost households. They are different measurements. Average household size has fallen for decades, so a town can hold its population steady, have fewer children in it, and still gain households. This chart shows the household count and the child-in-the-home count separately, with the survey’s own uncertainty drawn around both, so the two claims can be checked against each other rather than merged.
Three things it is not. It is not a count of people. It is not school enrollment — a household with children counts once whether it has one child or four, and it counts children who do not attend the district’s schools. And consecutive points are not independent observations: a five-year estimate pools survey responses from the five years ending at its label, so neighboring releases share four of their five years and the gap between them is not one year of change.
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Sources: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates — tables B11001 (household type), B11005 (households by presence of people under 18), B25002 (occupancy status) and B25003 (tenure), for Census county subdivisions, which in Connecticut are the towns. Packaged as /data/ct_town_households.json by Data/fetch_cpi_u.py’s sibling Data/fetch_ct_town_households.py. Estimates are published with a 90% margin of error and both are carried; the bands are those margins. Whether two estimates are called distinguishable here is decided by the simplest available rule — whether their 90% intervals overlap. That rule is conservative and is not a formal significance test; the Census Bureau advises against testing overlapping five-year releases against one another at all, which is a further reason to read small movements as unmeasured rather than as change. The household count (B11001) and the occupied-unit count (B25002) describe the same universe through two tables and agree in every town-year fetched.
How much business is located in the town?
Approach 9 — the commercial side. Establishments are the bars, on the left axis; jobs are the line, on the right. Unlike the household estimates above, this is a census rather than a survey: it comes from filings every employer covered by unemployment insurance is required to make, so there is no sampling error and a difference between two years is a real difference in what was filed.
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Sources: Connecticut Department of Labor, Office of Research — Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, dataset 7zu6-8dcr ("QCEW by NAICS (2 level) and Towns") on data.ct.gov, fields annavgestabs, annavgemp and naics2, packaged as /data/ct_qcew_towns.json. Totals use the source’s "Total — All Industries" row (naics2 00); that row and "Total — All Private Industries" (05) are totals rather than sectors, so the sector breakdown excludes both and the sectors do not sum to the total. Sectors small enough to identify a single employer are withheld, so a sector missing from the breakdown may be suppressed rather than empty; missing is carried as missing, never as zero. The source also carries an unknown pseudo-town for employers whose location could not be assigned; it is excluded from the town figures, which therefore do not sum to the statewide total.
How has Social Security moved against the budget?
Sources: SSA.gov COLA series — ssa.gov/oact/cola/colaseries.html · Colchester adopted budget books FY07-08 through FY24-25
Did Social Security keep pace with the levy and the tax bill?
Sources: SSA.gov COLAs · Colchester adopted budget books (totals, mill rates, Amount to be Raised by Taxation) · CT OPM Real Estate Sales (median single-family sale price).
What share of a retiree’s income does the bill on a median home take?
Sources: SSA.gov COLA series · Colchester adopted budgets (mill rates) · CT OPM Real Estate Sales (median home prices).
How many months of Social Security does that bill come to?
Sources: SSA.gov COLA series · Colchester adopted budgets (mill rates) · CT OPM Real Estate Sales (median home prices).
How does the mill rate move against what homes sell for?
Orange bars mark revaluation years. Home prices are median Colchester single-family sale amounts from CT OPM Real Estate Sales (data.ct.gov dataset 5mzw-sjtu). Listyears 2011, 2016, and 2021 are absent from the OPM dataset (no Sales Ratio is published for the listyear immediately preceding each FY 12-13/FY 17-18/FY 22-23 revaluation); for those three calendar years the value shown is the median of records whose daterecorded falls in the calendar year (n=109/142/206), which captures Jan–Sep sales of that year.
Total Budget = Colchester adopted budget (town + education). CT Income = state median household income. SS Benefit = reconstructed monthly benefit assuming a $1,000 starting benefit in 2007. * = revaluation year.
Wage / income growth: Connecticut statewide median household income from the U.S. Census Bureau, accessed via FRED series MEHOINUSCTA646N. The state median is used for trend comparison; Colchester's level is typically higher but the growth rate is similar.
Social Security COLA: Official annual cost-of-living adjustments from SSA.gov. The COLA labeled "year X" takes effect with benefits payable for December of year X. To produce a comparable index, we start with $1,000/month in 2007 and apply each year's COLA in sequence. The resulting "SS benefit index" answers: if your benefit grew only by official COLAs, how much would it have grown over the period?
Inflation (CPI-U): Annual CPI-U rates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (calendar-year averages). Used both as a comparison line and to deflate budget/income series into "real" (inflation-adjusted) growth in the Real tab.
Town budget: Adopted Colchester budgets FY 2007-08 through FY 2024-25, broken into the town-side appropriation and the Board of Education appropriation. The total is the sum.
Mill rates & home prices: Mill rates extracted from each year's adopted budget book. Median single-family home sale prices from the CT OPM Real Estate Sales dataset (data.ct.gov, `5mzw-sjtu`), filtered to Colchester residential single-family transactions. The OPM dataset does not publish a listyear for the year immediately preceding each Colchester revaluation (FY 12-13, FY 17-18, FY 22-23), so listyears 2011, 2016, and 2021 are absent; for those three calendar years the median is computed from records whose daterecorded field falls in the calendar year (n=109 / n=142 / n=206 — Jan–Sep coverage). For 2024 the value reflects partial-year data because the dataset's most recent listyear is 2023.
What this page does NOT do: This page does not estimate a property tax bill for any individual home, project future taxes, or model what would happen to your wallet under different scenarios. The earlier version of this page included that functionality; it was removed to focus on the comparison between income trends and town spending.
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.
| Fiscal year | Real estate and personal property | Motor vehicle | Grand list year |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2013-14 | 30.28 | 30.28 | 2012 |
| FY 2014-15 | 30.57 | 30.57 | 2013 |
| FY 2015-16 | 30.76 | 30.76 | 2014 |
| FY 2016-17 | 30.91 | 30.91 | 2015 |
| FY 2017-18 | 32.37 | 32.37 | 2016 |
| FY 2018-19 | 32.28 | 32.28 | 2017 |
| FY 2019-20 | 32.84 | 32.84 | 2018 |
| FY 2020-21 | 32.84 | 32.84 | 2019 |
| FY 2021-22 | 33.05 | 33.05 | 2020 |
| FY 2022-23 | 26.82 | 26.82 | 2021 |
| FY 2023-24 | 27.22 | 27.22 | 2022 |
| FY 2024-25 | 28.67 | 28.67 | 2023 |
| FY 2025-26 | 29.92 | 29.92 | 2024 |
A mill is $1 of tax per $1,000 of assessed value, and Connecticut assesses property at 70% of market value. A revaluation steps the posted rate down in that year even when the town collects the same amount of tax, so posted rates are not comparable across a revaluation or between towns. Source: CT OPM, Mill Rates (emyx-j53e).
| Fiscal year | Real property levy | Personal property levy | Motor vehicle levy | Total tax levy | Equalized mill rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2018-19 | $33,469,335 | $1,560,410 | $4,048,779 | $39,078,524 | 21.49 |
| FY 2019-20 | $34,283,527 | $1,666,740 | $4,166,813 | $40,117,080 | 21.93 |
| FY 2020-21 | $34,557,954 | $1,659,692 | $4,339,407 | $40,557,053 | 20.73 |
| FY 2021-22 | $35,333,703 | $1,872,866 | $4,527,341 | $41,733,911 | 18.53 |
| FY 2022-23 | not reported | not reported | not reported | $43,065,983 | 19.52 |
| FY 2023-24 | $35,824,237 | $2,363,050 | $4,935,850 | $43,123,136 | 15.52 |
| FY 2024-25 | $38,084,754 | $3,374,581 | $4,992,510 | $46,451,845 | 15.63 |
| FY 2025-26 | $39,731,461 | $3,379,266 | $4,895,527 | $48,006,254 | 15.36 |
| FY 2026-27 | $40,089,114 | $3,235,054 | $5,220,763 | $48,544,931 | not reported |
The three property-type levies are what the town reported billing on land and buildings, on business equipment and other personal property, and on the vehicles on its October 1 list; they sum to the total. Supplemental motor-vehicle bills, for vehicles registered after October 1, are billed separately and are not in the total. Where a year's breakdown reads "Not reported", the state's row for that year was a partial filing or a zero and the total comes from the town's adopted budget instead, which has no breakdown. The equalized rate restates the levy against the market value of the town's property. That is what makes rates comparable between towns and across a revaluation; the posted rate above is not. Source: CT OPM, Tax Levy by Municipality and Special Tax District (he33-brru) and Equalized Net Grand List (8rr8-a322).
| Grand list year | Net grand list | Residential | Commercial | Motor vehicle | Personal property |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | $1,176,520,440 | $892,463,500 | $98,212,900 | $115,389,290 | $38,546,180 |
| 2012 | not reported | $899,271,650 | $98,719,300 | $115,462,104 | $46,201,296 |
| 2013 | $1,195,815,175 | $907,484,360 | $98,797,400 | $115,959,209 | $41,857,755 |
| 2014 | $1,201,873,865 | $916,402,360 | $100,538,190 | $117,413,634 | $40,248,076 |
| 2015 | $1,216,010,210 | $926,175,520 | $101,161,940 | $119,799,940 | $41,925,360 |
| 2016 | $1,201,704,429 | $891,544,700 | $113,677,690 | $125,157,459 | $47,283,890 |
| 2017 | $1,213,163,935 | $902,773,650 | $111,037,810 | $127,875,950 | $48,524,180 |
| 2018 | $1,223,066,888 | $910,164,380 | $111,265,260 | $128,046,930 | $50,857,828 |
| 2019 | $1,240,099,632 | $918,131,870 | $113,180,010 | $133,464,158 | $52,904,750 |
| 2020 | $1,261,557,248 | $928,617,950 | $116,096,390 | $138,020,350 | $57,495,712 |
| 2021 | $1,544,354,077 | $1,145,075,470 | $135,683,680 | $173,431,850 | $66,714,207 |
| 2022 | $1,602,935,096 | $1,155,504,000 | $136,465,605 | $182,982,520 | $103,928,091 |
| 2023 | $1,623,422,414 | $1,169,713,390 | $136,695,375 | $175,719,320 | $118,165,539 |
| 2024 | $1,605,955,411 | $1,178,392,580 | $136,097,785 | $164,423,660 | $113,362,776 |
Assessed values, at 70% of market value. The grand list year runs ahead of the fiscal year that taxes it, so a grand list year and a fiscal year on this page are not the same period. Source: CT OPM, Net Grand List by Town (webp-fgt3).
| ACS release | Median household income | Per-capita income | Median home value | Median gross rent | Population |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $104,527 | $48,144 | $268,900 | $1,301 ±144 | 15,552 |
| 2022 | $114,505 | $52,273 | $315,500 | $1,276 ±175 | 15,550 |
| 2023 | $118,839 | $55,820 | $340,300 | $1,398 ±140 | 15,505 |
| 2024 | $122,390 | $60,108 | $366,800 | $1,474 ±153 | 15,648 |
Each release is a rolling five-year average, not a single year, so consecutive releases overlap and should not be read as year-over-year change. Median home value is what owners report to the survey, not an assessment. Gross rent is contract rent plus the estimated cost of utilities and fuels where the renter pays them, so it is not the figure on a lease; it covers renter-occupied units, while median home value covers owner-occupied ones. The number after ± is the 90% margin of error the Census publishes with that estimate. Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Median gross rent is ACS 5-year, B25064.