The Town of Windsor's website is a good source for documents related to the town budget and town finances. In addition to adopted current and past budgets, there are budget summaries and a guide that gives a high level view of the budget and the adoption process. In addition to budget documents, other useful financial documents, such as the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) are available for download. Click here to go to the Town of Windsor's financial document web site.
   Aside from these documents, the Town of Windsor holds informal budget workshops for residents who would like to see a presentation and ask questions about the budget. Town Council meetings provide an opportunity to publicly make requests or offer comment on the budget and provide an opportunity to witness department level presentations of budget requests.
   Sometimes the terminology used during the budget adoption process can get confusing. For example, some people use the words "budget cut" to describe a dollar reduction of a proposed budget compared to an earlier proposed budget even when the newly proposed budget is likely higher than the prior year's adopted budget. Nevertheless, one does not have to be a financial wizard to be able to participate in the budget process in Windsor and ultimately vote on a proposed budget in a referendum vote. Click here for a PDF document to get more details on how Windsor's budget adoption process compares with other towns in Connecticut.
   It is important that budget documents be able to convey information in both summary and detailed formats as the audience for these documents is quite diverse. More than one Town Councilor and Board of Education (BOE) member expressed frustration with the understandability of the BOE budget and supporting materials during the last budget adoption process. If elected officials tasked with the duty of creating a proposed budget have difficulty understanding the BOE budget, perhaps it is time to develop a more understandable and useful BOE budget document.

   Budgets are often developed based on an incremental framework of extending current services based on contractual obligations and inflationary pressures, resulting in changes to line items of a budget. Another form of budgeting is Zero Based Budgeting in which some or all line items of a budget must be evaluated and not just the changes to the line items. That approach is more complicated and requires a review and justification of the funding and performance levels of existing programs. Windsor budgets are not developed with the use of Zero Based Budgeting techniques.

   Some residents mistakenly believe the Windsor Board of Education (BOE) budget can be lowered below last year's adopted level, leading to a reduction in property taxes required to support that particular part of the town budget. That cannot happen because Connecticut General Statutes 10-262 set the baseline minimum BOE budget for the current fiscal year as last fiscal year's adopted BOE amount PLUS the increase in the Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) grant from the State of Connecticut for the current fiscal year. Subject to certain exceptions and restrictions, there are further adjustments that will allow most school districts to lower the baseline minimum by as much as 3%. Those adjustments are based on increased efficiencies and/or student population decreases. The MBR adjustment for a population decrease is the student population decrease multiplied by 50% of the District's Net Current Expenditures per student.
   There are restrictions placed on current or past Alliance Districts, of which Windsor is one. Thirty school districts have been identified by the state as Alliance Districts based on having the lowest performance as measured by a district performance index. These districts cannot lower their Minimum Budget Requirement for population decreases or increased efficiencies in their budget. An exception is made for school districts that perform in the top 10% of all districts based on the same district performance index. Those districts are no longer subject to the MBR, and can lower their BOE budget without restrictions.
   A BOE budget adopted that is lower than the MBR will result in a penalty (withholding of ECS funds) that is twice as large as the adopted budget shortfall from the MBR. The net result would be an increase in the property taxes required to support a town's budget. In an environment where school district populations have been generally decreasing, some districts will have more flexibility than other districts in controlling education budget increases over time. Alliance Districts have the least flexibility.