Town Manager Tom Christensen presents the fiscal year 2027 budget.
Photo credit: ELCAT01028
EAST LONGMEADOW — East Longmeadow Town Manager Tom Christensen said the town is seeing a full budget increase of 2.3% for fiscal year 2027, citing it as “good planning and budgeting,” rather than unfortunate.
He presented the current state of the budget at the Town Council meeting on March 24.
Total revenue for the town in FY27 is estimated at $99.6 million with the general fund budget at $80.97 million. The schools take up the largest portion of the general fund by far at $38.01 million, with town departments behind it at $19.25 million.
Other expenses in the general fund are town debt at $761,876, excluded debt at $5.6 million, town insurance at $1.07 million, town benefits at $9.81 million and the town retirement fund at $6.5 million.
The town funds more than 70% of its general fund budget from taxes, with the remaining percentage from state aid and local receipts. The presentation stated “historically, the town has not taxed up to its levy capacity.”
A levy is the amount of revenue the town can raise through real estate and property tax and is estimated at $61.4 million The excess levy capacity is estimated at $1.59 million, which is the gap between the actual levy and the maximum levy allowed. The excess levy in FY26 was $1.93 million, and Christensen said the town is working to get back to that number.
“Due to the rising costs of retirement, health insurance, special education and the constraints of Proposition 2½, the FY27 budget proposes, again, to tax below the full amount allowable under Proposition 2½, but to rely on approximately $400,000 in excess levy to aid in funding these rising costs,” the presentation said.
Christensen added that the town is looking at a 50-cent increase in the water rate and said it is “unfortunately, a sign of things to come.” He said the town is exploring a “tiered” system so the rate for single family homes isn’t the same for “larger users.”
“What that’s going to look like, I don’t even want to say right now,” Christensen said. “We’re trying to figure out ways to, sort of, stop these large increases from hitting our smaller users because they’re the ones that are impacted the most.”
The town is projecting $5.4 million in local receipts for FY27, with a majority of that number being $2.94 million in motor vehicle excise tax. This tax is paid annually by residents with a registerd vehicle and is calculated at a rate of $25 per $1,000 of a vehicle’s value.
The investment income, estimated at $400,000 for FY27, has “really been amazing for us,” according to Christensen.
“The benefits of borrowing that amount of money and investing it properly … FY24 was over $1 million, last year, obviously, was almost $3.4 million and this year so far, in FY26, we’re over $1.5 million,” Christensen said. “It’s just, sort of, that prudent investing thing that we talked about all those years ago, and how good our treasurer is and our finance team is to put that money to use for us in the right way. Obviously, that just gets put right back into the community in all the best ways possible.”
Christensen added that he wishes there were more funds from more places, which would allow the town to do more, but that the town can “continue what we’ve been doing and not break the bank doing it.”
