The short version: these charts are complete, but the story is ordinary
The two charts below were built out fully — town-side insurance (health, workers' comp, property/liability, unemployment) and the Board of Education's employee health/dental/vision line — but the takeaway is unremarkable. Insurance costs in Colchester have risen at roughly the rate they have risen for employers across Connecticut and the country.
Town health insurance grew about 54% over 18 years, close to the 51% rise in general consumer prices over the same window. Health insurance premiums have climbed broadly across U.S. public and private employers over this period, so Colchester's trend largely reflects the national cost-of-coverage environment rather than a town-specific decision. The year-to-year wiggles come mostly from claims experience, plan-year timing, and accounting treatment of reserve balances — not from anything that distinguishes Colchester from its neighbors.
The charts live on their own page because they are included for completeness and transparency, not because they reveal a distinctive local trend. Read them if you want the line-item detail; the headline is simply that insurance got more expensive everywhere.
Town Insurance Costs: Health, Workers' Comp & Liability
Town-side insurance budget (health insurance, workers' compensation, property/liability, unemployment). This covers ~85 town employees — the BOE manages its own benefits separately. All amounts from adopted budget line items.
Key takeaway: Town health insurance grew 54.1% ($729K → $1.12M) — roughly tracking CPI inflation (51.3%). Total town insurance costs grew 61.5% ($1.25M → $2.02M), with workers' compensation as the faster-growing component. Insurance as a share of the total town budget rose from 9.2% to 11.8%. Year-to-year health insurance line moves substantially (notable dips in FY 2012-13, FY 2014-15, and FY 2015-16); the underlying drivers are not directly attributable from the budget books in the source folder — possible factors include claims experience, plan-year timing, carrier or plan-design changes, and accounting reclassifications, but no specific renegotiation event with quantified savings was located in the Lockton consultant pages or town meeting minutes available here. The BOE's employee benefits (separate from this budget) were $4.49M in FY 2007-08 (13.5% of the BOE budget); detailed BOE benefits breakdowns are not available in the town budget documents for later years.
BOE Employee Related Insurance — Budgeted Cost Over Time
The BOE's adopted budget for employee health/dental/vision insurance (account 41210). The dashed line shows what FY 2010-11's cost would be if it had simply grown with CPI inflation.
Key takeaway: The BOE's adopted budget line for employee health/dental/vision insurance peaked at $5.58M in FY 2014-15, then dropped to $3.82M in FY 2022-23 — a 31.5% step down. OCR of the FY 2023-24 and FY 2024-25 budget books (added 2026-05-27) confirms the line stayed at the lower level — $3.96M (FY 23-24) and $3.63M (FY 24-25) — so the FY 2022-23 drop was a permanent restructuring, not a one-year blip, and it did not bounce back. The FY 2023-24 budget book's own rationale line for this account cites drawing on a "health reserve balance," and the ~$1.4M did not reappear on the town side (the town budget did not jump in FY 2022-23). The most defensible reading: the reduction reflects using accumulated insurance-reserve fund balance to offset budgeted premiums — an accounting/funding change — rather than a real cut in employee benefits. This budgeted line alone does not track underlying claims costs year to year; readers interested in the true cost picture should consult the district's actuarial reports rather than over-reading this single line.