East Hampton residents have sent two budgets back to the town government, and now officials are weighing the possibility of limiting snow removal and transfer station services to save money.
On social media, many people have expressed concern about limiting these services, including Town Councilman Ted Hintz.
“Major policy decisions that affect hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of residents should not be made in haste simply to balance a budget,” Hintz wrote on Facebook.
Many budget concerns appear rooted in a belief that taxpayer money continues to be wasted on inflated expenses connected to school spending and contracts. Some have called for an audit of all town expenses, or to even create a local DOGE-like entity that could eliminate services at its discretion. Discussions about regionalization, lobbying for more state funding, and sharing services between the town and the schools are also happening.
In the meantime, the town needs a spending plan. The third budget proposal, which goes to referendum on Wednesday, August 5, is only $350,000 higher than last year’s budget. This is a 0.6% increase. The inflation rate for the Northeast as of July 30, was 4.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. If that inflation measure holds over the next year, the 0.6% budget increase is, effectively, a 3.7% decrease.
Town spending has been a controversial topic going back decades, but rising economic pressures have many concerned about any increase. Many East Hampton residents, like other Americans, are feeling the brunt of higher prices on everything. Connecticut’s cost of living is the 11th highest in the country, according to the cost of living index created by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center. Inflation continues to outpace wage growth, and the state’s unemployment rate has been steadily increasing since July 2023. It’s currently at 5.2%, the highest level since November 2021, according to the Federal Reserve Economic Data.
Additionally, an April report from the state Office of Legislative Research showed that between 2015 and 2024, Connecticut’s poverty rate only decreased from 10.5% to 10.2%, while reliance on public assistance has increased.
Given all these external pressures, many residents feel reluctant to approve any sort of budget, even one that, given inflation, would effectively be a budget cut. Now, some people who have been against the budget, claiming it was too high, are against the budget now because of proposed service cuts.
Despite not having a working budget for the fiscal year, which started on July 1, the town is not shutting down. Basic services, payroll and debt payments continue to be funded using the interim mill rate of 27.79 that the Town Council set earlier this summer specifically so tax bills could go out while the budget fight continued. Installment bills using that rate were already due July 1. What is not yet settled is how much money the town and schools will actually have to spend for the rest of the year, and that uncertainty is where the real impact lands.
Low voter turnout has plagued town votes in recent memory. Turnout for the second referendum on July 14 was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%. This means that only a quarter of registered voters are deciding how the town spends money.
Some effects of this budget fight arrived before the second vote even happened. Among the casualties: the district’s Smart Start Pre-K program, a longstanding early childhood program at Memorial School that families have relied on for years to prepare children for kindergarten. The program was the subject of extended public comment at an April 28 Town Council meeting, where the superintendent said at the time it was still funded. It was not spared in the end, and a Change.org petition titled “Save East Hampton’s Smart Start Program and Protect Early Childhood Education” has been circulating since.
One East Hampton parent, who asked not to be named out fear of being targeted online, described the scramble that followed:
“I had to dedicate days to secure my son’s spot in kindergarten. We received a letter that Smart Start program was not happening for this school year. We had already enrolled and gave our daycare notice that he would be in the program. By the time we were told the program was eliminated, our spot in daycare was at risk. We were lucky enough that our son is a September birthday and ready for kindergarten. I feel awful for parents that are now left to scramble for last-minute schooling and daycare.”
This family found a workaround because of their son’s late birthday. Not every family has that opportunity. For parents whose children were born in January or later, or who aren’t ready yet for kindergarten, the sudden loss of a pre-K option leaves few good choices: pay out of pocket for private preschool or daycare, if a seat and the money can be found on short notice, or convince the district to accept their less-prepared child straight for kindergarten.
What a smaller pre-K program could mean for kindergarten
It’s important to be precise here: not every child who would have had a Smart Start seat is headed for a kindergarten classroom this fall. The program serves pre-kindergarten-age children. Only the children who would have turned 5 in time for this school year were ever on track to move into kindergarten regardless of whether Smart Start existed. Younger children in the program simply lose a year of public pre-K, not a spot in kindergarten. Depending on what their families can arrange, they may end up in private child care, informal care, or nothing formal until they’re kindergarten-eligible themselves.
Some will find private preschool. Others, like the parent quoted above, will enroll in kindergarten anyway because their child happens to be nearly old enough and ready. Some may choose to hold a child back a year if they can manage it financially.
East Hampton has seen this kind of ripple effect before: after a budget fight in 2023, parents and the teachers’ union publicly warned that a proposed round of cuts would raise class sizes, particularly at Memorial School, before a second referendum restored funding and reversed those specific cuts, according to the Connecticut Education Association. Whether this year’s Smart Start cut produces a similar bump at Memorial won’t be clear until enrollment is finalized.
The harder question: special education and outplacement
There is a less visible risk buried in cuts like this one. When a district eliminates or shrinks an in-house program, some students who need more support than a general classroom can provide end up requiring specialized services the district cannot usually provide internally. Federal law under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires districts to meet those needs regardless of budget, which sometimes means using public funds to send a child to a private special education school, a practice known as outplacement.
These expenses can add up quickly. A recent research brief from UConn’s Neag School of Education found outplacement costs at one Connecticut district ranged from roughly $24,000 to more than $219,000 per student per year, plus about $25,000 per student for transportation. Statewide, CT Mirror has reported that some districts now spend more than 30 percent of their entire budget on special education, and that excess costs for outplacement rose 25 percent from 2023 to 2024 alone. The irony school finance experts point to again and again: cutting an early intervention or in-district support program to save money in one budget year can end up costing a district far more a year or two later, once a handful of students who needed extra help end up needing outplacement instead. East Hampton has not announced any new outplacement cases tied to this year’s cuts, but it is the kind of downstream cost that rarely shows up in the budget year it was caused by.
What this means for your tax bill
Here is where the budget fight and the property revaluation collide, and where a lot of the online confusion has emerged.
The mill rate tied to the budget that failed was projected at 28.22, according to the town’s own property tax estimator page, a steep decrease from recent years. That drop is mostly a function of the revaluation, meaning that many homes increased in value since the last valuation. Per the Town Council-approved FY2027 budget document that voters rejected, the town’s net grand list of real estate and personal property jumped 44.21% this year, from about $1.12 billion to $1.62 billion, because many home values rose sharply since 2020. When the total value of taxable property in town goes up that much, it takes a lower mill rate to raise the same amount of money, even in a year when the budget itself grows.
That math cuts both ways for individual households. Because many homes gained value faster than commercial and industrial properties over the past five years, homeowners as a group are now carrying a larger share of the tax burden than before, regardless of what happens with this budget fight. A lower mill rate does not guarantee a lower bill. Whether your bill goes up or down depends on how your specific property’s new assessment compares to the townwide average, a distinction that got lost for a lot of residents in the back-and-forth over spending totals.
What the failed votes do change is the size of the pie being divided. If the next version of the budget comes in lower, the mill rate needed to fund it could drop further, easing bills somewhat. But that relief, if it happens, comes directly out of the same programs and staffing already being debated at Town Council meetings; the same programs whose absence parents like the one quoted above are already living with. There is no version of this where the town collects less money and nobody feels it.
What’s next
The next referendum is set for Tuesday, August 5. The proposed budget includes $340,000 in reductions to the total budget, which is $602,000 lower than the first budget that was rejected. The revised Education budget is approximately $787,000 higher than last year’s budget, an increase of 2%. The town budget is slated at $350,156, a o.6% increase. The inflation rate for the Northeast as of July 30, was 4.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. If that inflation measure holds over the next year,, the 2% budget increase is, effectively, a 2.3% decrease.
Budget questions can be sent to budget@easthamptonct.gov, and residents can leave a video or audio comment for the Town Council through the town’s website.
Where to find more information
The town’s Annual Budget 2026-2027 page hosts the current budget documents, the property tax estimator, and updates on the mill rate as the process moves forward.
Board of Finance and Town Council agendas, minutes, and meeting dates are posted on the town’s Agenda Center, including whenever the next budget workshop or public hearing is scheduled.
The Town Manager’s Reports page has periodic updates from Town Manager David Cox on where things stand. Residents can email budget@easthamptonct.gov directly with questions or comments for the Board of Finance and Town Council.
Council member Ted Hintz, Jr. hosted a “Ted Talk: Let’s Talk East Hampton!” meet-and-greet on Monday. On Facebook, Hintz described the event as a success.
“Some attendees supported the budget, others had serious concerns, and many were simply looking for facts before casting their vote,” Hintz wrote. “That’s exactly why I wanted to host this event—to provide an opportunity for residents to ask questions, hear different viewpoints, and have an open discussion outside the formal meeting setting.”
Economic pressures are real, and so is the need to appropriately fund public services. Like many small American towns, East Hampton is reconciling how to plan for a future where economic pressures aren’t as severe, which requires investment in public services – a chicken-and-egg conundrum that doesn’t have an easy answer.