Rainy-Day Reserves — All 169 Connecticut Towns

Each town's unassigned fund balance as a share of its budget — the cushion between a bad year and a tax increase.

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Picking a town highlights it in every chart and table on this page, and the highlight follows you to the other ranking pages. Clear the box to remove it.

Read this before ranking towns: the unassigned fund balance is the money a town has finished the year with and not committed to anything — its shock absorber for a failed revaluation appeal, a storm, or a state-aid cut. More is not automatically better: reserves are taxes already collected and not spent, and a very large balance draws the opposite criticism from a very small one. The Government Finance Officers Association recommends holding at least two months of spending, but towns set their own policies and no single right number exists. This page uses the audited year —, the most recent the state publishes.
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Smallest cushion
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Statewide median
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Largest cushion

Unassigned fund balance as a share of spending

Each town's unassigned general-fund balance divided by its total expenditures, — audited. Sorted smallest to largest. For scale: one month of spending is about 8%.

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Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), fields unassigned, total_fund_balance and total_expenditures, via ct_ucoa_town_indicators.json. Audited actuals; municipalities self-report their audited figures to OPM from FY 2020 on.

The full table

All towns with the unassigned share, the dollar figure, and the total fund balance for comparison.

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How this ranking is made

Cushion = unassigned general-fund balance ÷ total expenditures, both audited, same town, same year. “Unassigned” is the accounting category for balance not committed, assigned or restricted to any purpose; the total fund balance in the table includes those committed pieces and is always at least as large.

  • A town that deliberately draws reserves down to soften a tax increase will rank lower the following year by choice, not by weakness.
  • Some towns hold reserves in separate internal-service funds (health insurance, capital) that this general-fund figure does not see.
  • Comparisons to the one-to-two-months convention are a reading aid; charters, policies and auditor advice differ town to town.

More rankings: debt · spending per resident · tax rates