East Hampton’s proposed budget reflects a tension that is playing out across Connecticut: rising fixed costs that leave less room for the programs often valued most. The Town Council approved budget totals $60.45 million, a 3.23% increase over the prior year. Education accounts for nearly two-thirds of the total tax burden.
While the overall increase appears moderate, the underlying pressures are not. A growing share of spending is tied to expenses that towns cannot easily control. Employee benefits alone are rising sharply; up 15.8% from the prior year and largely driven by health insurance costs. Costs across departments also continue to trend upward due to contractual obligations.
Across Connecticut, school budgets are under strain not seen in recent memory. The primary culprit in most districts is the same: federal relief money that flowed into classrooms during the pandemic has run out, and local property taxes are being asked to fill a gap that was never supposed to be permanent. Fran Rabinowitz, who leads the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, said publicly in May 2025 that the volume of failed budget referendums has no precedent in her experience.
The scale of what districts have had to absorb is significant. Congress created the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program in 2020 to help schools manage pandemic disruption. Connecticut drew roughly $1.7 billion from the program across three separate rounds of funding. Districts used those dollars to hire staff, expand programs, and address learning setbacks. When the grants expired, those costs did not disappear. They transferred to local budgets that were not built to carry them.
Southwest Connecticut offers some of the starkest examples of what that transfer looks like in practice. In June of 2025, Norwalk’s school board faced a gap of more than $13 million and drew up a plan that included eliminating over 100 positions and ending elementary music instruction entirely. Bridgeport’s board confronted a $30 million hole and responded by approving cuts to assistant principals, kindergarten classroom aides, and its performing arts program.
A separate federal action exacerbated these challenges. In late June 2025, the Trump administration placed a hold on nearly $7 billion in education grants that Congress had already approved and states were expecting to receive on July 1. Connecticut joined a 26-state coalition suing to restore the funds. The state’s share of the freeze amounted to more than $53 million, money that had been earmarked for teacher training, English language learners, after-school programs, and adult literacy.
Who bears the burden of these cuts is not random. The Connecticut Education Association (CEA) noted in a public statement that the programs most at risk serve children who rely on them most, including students in low-income households, those with disabilities, and children just entering the school system. CEA President Kate Dias said the effect is to leave the most vulnerable students further behind.
The reality of budget slashing is that it takes a significant reduction to have an impact on tax bills. Because one mill in East Hampton raises roughly $1.6 million, reducing spending by several hundred thousand dollars only lowers taxes modestly, meaning a cut of around $400,000 (0.25 mill reduction) would translate to only $50-$60 in savings for the average homeowner. This is about 13 to 16 cents per day. Deeper cuts of $1 million or more would still result in relatively limited reductions compared to the scale of services affected.
The depth of concern among district leaders was documented well before the federal freeze. A 2024 survey of 60 Connecticut superintendents found that nearly all of them expected the end of federal relief money to harm students in their districts, with three in four predicting the impact would be significant.
For information on the author’s perspective, read “What Budget Cuts Cost Kids – and What They Can Cost a Town Forever”