On occasion I hear back and forth banter about who “owns” the money from this or that revenue stream received by the town. The simple answer in most cases is—whether generated on the municipal side or education—it flows into the General Fund of the Town of Granby. While there are separate General Fund checkbooks for municipal and education operations, when the end of the fiscal year rolls around the books close on each operating budget component and any and all unspent money from those budgets falls back to the General Fund itself. It’s all one General Fund—all one Town—all one overall budget. Bottom line, it ultimately becomes the taxpayers’ money.
While there are certain distinct isolated funds with dedicated revenues or grants feeding them, the vast majority of money coming into the Town of Granby—whether municipal or education related—flows through and resides in the all-encompassing General Fund of the Town of Granby. This includes everything from property taxes to the state Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant, to special education cost reimbursements, to most Town Hall fees.
This is why, in a breakdown of a full town budget encompassing both the municipal and education expenditure components, the revenue side shows property taxes, other local revenues, and intergovernmental revenues that include state aid formula grants, tuition from other towns and certain special education reimbursements from other towns and the state. They all flow into what in the end is a single, all-encompassing Town of Granby General Fund. One Town—One Budget—One General Fund.
Historically, the Connecticut General Statutes and subsequently Town Charters such as ours, as well as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and the Government Accounting Standards Board (GAAP and GASB), call for transparency in reflecting expenditures on one side of the ledger and revenues on the other, with any netting of a revenue from an expenditure item generally not allowed. Per the Town’s audit firm, where they find that sort of netting in other municipalities, it gets reversed and hence corrected upon audit. One finds as well that per the Town Charter, the gross amount must be appropriated as opposed to a netted amount. Simply put, one cannot spend $10 if the approved appropriation is for $9. While some towns push the envelope by doing so, it is far clearer to show the full math in balancing the budgetary equation rather than using a short-cut only to be corrected at audit time.