Anytime you talk about Stafford's budget, you hear we need more businesses to contribute to the tax base. I agree, but I tend to think we need more industry, not large-scale retail. (Though I personally welcome small businesses that add to the character of our town and draw in tourism.) So, I started poking around mill rates in towns with lots of retail. Obviously, I started with Manchester, which not only has the traffic nightmare that is the Buckland Hills Mall (or is it The Shoppes at Buckland Hills now?) but also has a thriving Downtown area, and let us not forget the Parkade!
Then I moved on to Enfield, which has a smaller but still significant retail presence (though the Enfield Square Mall has struggled for years and is getting a new mixed-use life).
Imagine my surprise when I found that Manchester has a higher mill rate than Stafford, and Enfield's is lower, but not by as much as one would hope based on all that retail. Meanwhile, our neighbors to the East, Union and Woodstock, are significantly lower than Stafford, Enfield, and Manchester.
Stafford - 36.76
Enfield - 30.56
Manchester - 37.20
Woodstock - 22.4
Union - 28.35
(Source)
Then, I saw a story this morning that really got me thinking. Manchester wants to bump its mill rate up to 39.37. Why? Well, according to the article, it's driven by "salaries and benefits, pensions, and debt for the new Main Street library, alongside the Board of Education's requested $4.8 million increase, were the major drivers behind his recommended $243.6 million budget for fiscal year 2024-25, a $14.2 million or 6.19 percent increase over the town's current general fund." Of course, Manchester has a much larger population than Stafford, but considering how much of that town is devoted to retail, you would think they would see more benefit.
Interestingly, this Op-Ed in the CT Mirror, suggests more housing leads to lower tax rates: "Expressed as cash on a weighted average basis, residents of towns issuing more housing permits spent $2,000 per capita less in property taxes than residents of towns issuing fewer permits over the time period. With an average household size of 2.45 persons, that is $4,900 less paid in property taxes per family within each of those towns. That equates to an additional $90.6 million dollars available for saving and local spending for those residents."
Large-scale retail brings in tax dollars, but it also means more wear and tear on the roads (roads we already don't fund properly), a need for more police presence (the request for an additional Resident State Trooper was cut from this year's proposed budget), and the need for things like access to city water and sewer (which would likely require us to expand our sewer plant).
So, let's look at Union and Woodstock. These towns have much smaller populations than Stafford and provide relatively few services. Union does not have a high school and the Woodstock Academy is essentially a regional school that participating towns pay tuition to. When you provide services and amenities (like Starbucks and Chick-fil-A... or, in Stafford's case, Aldi's and Taco Bell), people want to move to your town. Union and Woodstock have purposely avoided development and the costs and services that come with it.
Stafford is somewhere in the middle (literally and figuratively) of Woodstock and Enfield. We now face the question, "How do we want to grow?" We can't go backward, so becoming Woodstock or Union is off the table, but we don't have to be Enfield either. We can find ways to grow that help build the bottom line without unnecessarily stressing town services.