General Fund
$3,580,287
Fire & Emergency Management Services
Citywide appropriation line
Explainer 04
The fire-tax question has a real answer—and several unsupported shortcuts.
Norwich’s Charter separates citywide general benefits from district special benefits. The current levy is measurable. The future cost of an undefined operating model is not.
The Charter rule
Paid fire service is named as a CCD special benefit.
Charter Chapter VII § 18 classifies the paid fire department in the City Consolidation District as a special benefit. It says special-benefit costs are not paid by a general city tax and directs a special tax on the CCD—or other areas serviced by the paid department—for specified salaries, pensions, clothing, and employee allowances.
That does not prove every apparatus, capital, emergency-management, or general-fund fire expense must come only from the CCD. It does prove that “NPU pays for the paid department” is not the Charter’s stated funding rule.
YOUR TAXES / FY 2026–27
What do the district rates mean for you?
Enter your property’s assessed value here to see the tax comparison. Use assessed value, not market value. Compare the adopted real estate and personal property rates. Motor vehicles are excluded.
Use the assessment on your bill or property record. Market value is a different figure; this calculator does not convert a sale-price estimate.
TCD · 34.44 mills
$5,166.0034.15 base + 0.29 district millsCCD · 39.38 mills
$5,907.0034.15 base + 5.23 district millsDifference per year
$741.00At the same assessed valueSimplified levy arithmetic, not a complete tax bill. Exemptions, credits and other adjustments are not modeled. Rates apply July 1, 2026–June 30, 2027 to the October 1, 2025 grand list. City mill-rate table · checked October 5, 2026.
What if the same district fire levy were spread citywide?
Illustration only—not an adopted tax proposal. The existing 2.02-mill fire proxy assumes no added staffing, overtime, apparatus, station, transition or operating costs, no change in other revenues and the same combined district fire levy.
Conservative cost assumption: This constant-cost illustration uses FY 2026-27 adopted district rates and FY 2025 audited district tax bases. It assumes no additional staffing, station expansion or increased maintenance costs. It is an allocation scenario, not a forecast or a guaranteed lower bound on a tax increase.
Your current TCD comparison
$5,166.00Illustrative citywide · 36.17 mills
$5,425.50Illustrative annual TCD change
+$259.50+5.0% of this simplified current totalThe proxy keeps the earlier calculator’s assumptions: FY 2026–27 district rates weighted by FY 2025 audited district lists. CCD: $1,019,223,000; TCD: $1,892,428,000. (5.23 × CCD list + 0.29 × TCD list) ÷ combined list = about 2.019 mills, rounded to 2.02. This combines different years; it does not estimate the cost of restoring or removing a company.
FY 2025 audit, printed p. 157 / PDF p. 180 · Ordinance 1887. Actual boundaries, classifications, tax bases and retained TCD expenses could produce a different result.
FY 2026–27
What the adopted budget actually says
CCD
$8,819,212
City Consolidation District
Whole district appropriation
TCD
$600,956
Town Consolidation District
Whole district appropriation
These are official appropriation lines, not a calculation of the dispute’s cost and not proof that every dollar in a line went to one department or event.
What is known
- The base city levy is 34.15 mills.
- The TCD fire levy is 0.29 mills.
- The CCD fire levy is 5.23 mills.
- The FY 2026–27 adopted difference is 4.94 mills, or $494 yearly per $100,000 of assessed value.
- Charter § 13 bars transfers of unencumbered appropriations from one consolidation district to the other.
What is not known
- The permanent staffing and station plan after the litigation.
- Whether paid-service boundaries or the CCD itself would change.
- The future labor, overtime, apparatus, station, and capital costs.
- Which costs would be classified as citywide versus district special benefits.
- The final mill-rate impact of a proposal that has not been fully defined and adopted.
The 2026 transfer
Do not call every added NFD dollar “the cost of closing Yantic.”
On August 3 the Council adopted a $565,000 transfer: $535,000 associated with NFD and $30,000 for law. Official material attributed the NFD need partly to temporary Yantic coverage and partly to higher utilities and fuel generally. The listed components included replacement staffing, fringe, fuel, and utilities.
The transfer is evidence of added cost pressure. It is not a clean, independently audited “closure price tag.”