Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Windsor Town Manager William Saunders presented fiscal year 2023 year-end revenue projections to the Windsor Town Council on Feb. 7, noting that he and town staff are projecting ending the fiscal year with $108,676 more than budgeted.

As noted in a memo to the mayor and Town Council within the council meeting packet, Saunders stated that he had attached a copy of the revenue projections for the general fund and that numbers for January and all previous months are actual numbers.

“The numbers for February through June are estimates based off of historical data, trends and assumptions,” he stated, adding that July and August are also included, even though they are outside of FY23, to show revenues that will be rolled back into FY23.

He explained that he and town staff will continue to update their projections as the fiscal year progresses.

“This data will be used to help determine revenues for the FY24 budget,” he stated.

As preparations of revenue projections for the upcoming budget year get underway, a large deviation from the current fiscal year projections is not anticipated, he noted.

“We do not anticipate any large change in our real estate or personal property taxes,” he stated. “However, this is a real estate reassessment year, and increases in assessments are expected to increase revenue over 1%, thereby requiring council to make a decision about the real estate rate going forward.”

He indicated that Windsor’s other sources of revenue may fluctuate slightly, but he does not anticipate any significant changes from the current conditions.

Current projections in water sales — not including “other income” — in the Water Fund anticipate the receipt of $72,337.14 more than the budgeted amount, he noted.

Among the revenue projections for the general fund, the revenue source with the greatest total above the budgeted amount was the meals tax. The budget anticipated $480,000 of revenue from this tax, and the projections anticipate $555,044 — a variance of $75,044.

“The reason for the surplus in meals tax is due to a conservative estimate,” Saunders said. “We had a few new restaurants open in town around the time that we were creating the revenue projections last year. At the time, we were unsure if they would generate much additional revenue, or if it would just be a case of the new restaurants capturing business that would have gone to existing businesses.”

The local sales and use tax was the revenue source with the second-highest total above the budgeted amount. The budget listed $140,000, and the projection is $160,259 — a variance of $20,259.

“At the time of revenue projections last year, the General Assembly was considering cutting the tax on groceries; as the impact was an unknown, the revenues were projected conservatively,” Saunders said. “As it turns out, the grocery taxes were cut, not at the beginning of the fiscal year as expected, but at the midpoint.”