Your property tax bill can feel like City Hall has attached a vacuum hose to your wallet. But after the money leaves your pocket, where does it actually go?
Think of Milford as a household with one very large checking account. It has people to pay, buildings to run, services to buy and old loans to repay. The useful question is what is inside each of those piles.
First, imagine the whole budget is $100
Milford’s adopted 2026–27 general fund budget is $278.1 million. Shrink it to $100 and the largest piles look like this:
| What it pays for | Out of $100 |
|---|---|
| Schools, including separately budgeted benefits and school debt | $54.94 |
| City employee benefits, insurance, claims and reserves | $15.46 |
| Police, fire and other public safety | $13.26 |
| Trash, roads, parks and other public services | $5.58 |
| Repaying city debt outside the school category | $4.85 |
| Libraries, city offices, health, recreation and agency grants | $5.90 |
These are shares of total spending, rounded, so they may not add to exactly $100. They are not separate charges on your bill. The sections below open up those piles; don’t add them to this table again.
Schools get the biggest pile. What is in it?
The $152.8 million education category has four main pieces: $118.95 million in school operations; $24.09 million for the school health-insurance fund contribution; $6.56 million in school debt; and $3.20 million for other listed education benefits, school health services, audit fees and private-school textbooks. City budget, printed page 13.
“Operations” means running the school system. A school day requires teachers, aides, buses, custodians, electricity and services for children whose needs cannot be met in an ordinary classroom.
Here is the school district’s adopted operating budget, opened up into more useful pieces:
| Inside the $118.95 million school operating budget | 2026–27 |
|---|---|
| All salaries: teachers, principals, aides, custodians, office staff and others | $83.20 million |
| Benefits carried in the school operating budget | $8.44 million |
| Tuition for students educated outside district programs | $8.19 million |
| Transportation | $7.74 million |
| Facilities, such as utilities and building services | $5.08 million |
| Contracted services | $2.33 million |
| Educational supplies and equipment | $2.05 million |
| Other support and other educational support combined | $1.93 million |
Amounts are rounded. This table is inside the school-operations slice above, not extra spending on top of it.
One detail helps explain the benefits bill: the operating budget includes $4.79 million for eligible retirees’ over-65 health coverage. The much larger contribution for active employees’ medical coverage sits separately in the city budget. School budget, printed pages 12–13.
What does the average Milford teacher make?
About $96,800 per full-time-equivalent teaching position is budgeted for 2026–27, using the district’s regular-education and special-education teacher lines.
The math: $44,020,501 for 453.5 regular-education teaching positions, plus $6,105,999 for 64.4 special-education teaching positions. That is $50,126,500 divided by 517.9 full-time-equivalent positions. School budget, printed page 2.
A full-time equivalent is a unit of staffing: two half-time positions equal one full-time equivalent. This is Milford Voice’s calculated budget average for those two teacher groups, before benefits. It is not take-home pay, a starting salary, or an audited average of every individual teacher’s actual earnings. Counselors, administrators and other staff have separate lines. Individual pay varies with experience and qualifications.
“Government” sounds vague. What are we buying?
A library belongs in a different mental pile from the mayor’s office. And neither tells you what it costs to keep the city’s computers running. Here are selected adopted amounts, rounded, with the budget labels translated:
| Office or service | What the money is for | 2026–27 |
|---|---|---|
| Finance | Accounting, tax and financial administration | $2.61 million |
| Information technology | City computer systems and technical support | $1.78 million |
| Public library | Library staff, materials and operations | $1.41 million |
| Permitting and land use | Reviewing and administering development and building-related activity | $1.29 million |
| Law department | The city’s legal work | $778,246 |
| City clerk | Official records and clerk services | $485,122 |
| Human resources | Hiring and personnel administration | $470,969 |
| Mayor’s office | Staffing and operation of the mayor’s office | $384,042 |
These are examples within the general-government and administration categories, not a complete list. City budget, printed page 10. A department total is more than the salary of the person whose name is on the office door.
What about police, fire, roads and trash?
The adopted department amounts include $18.91 million for police, $15.33 million for fire, $5.17 million for solid waste and $3.27 million for highways/parks. City budget, printed page 11. Think emergency response, collecting trash and looking after public spaces. These department figures do not include all centrally budgeted employee benefits.
The big benefits pile: paying people costs more than wages
Think about your own job. Your paycheck is one cost; health coverage and retirement benefits are other costs. Milford has the same distinction, across a large workforce.
Among the city’s centrally listed employee-benefit lines are $17.07 million for the fire/police/general pension contribution and $13.22 million for its self-insurance contribution. Those amounts are already inside the budget totals above. City budget, printed page 84.
The pension contribution puts money into the retirement fund. Retiree pension checks come out of that fund, which also receives employee contributions and investment earnings. The city’s annual deposit and the fund’s annual payouts are two different numbers.
How much is being paid out in pensions—and what is the average?
The city’s 2025 annual financial report, Note 10, printed page 55 reports $35.264 million in pension benefit payments, including refunds of employee contributions, for the year ended June 30, 2025. That is historical fund activity, not the 2026–27 budget contribution.
The same report lists 887 retirees and beneficiaries receiving benefits as of July 1, 2024 (printed page 51).
An exact average pension could not be verified from those figures. Dividing them would mix a full year of payments and refunds with an earlier headcount that includes beneficiaries. A reliable average needs recurring pension payments and a matching recipient count for the same period. We have not presented that division as the average retired employee’s pension.
Teachers are also a separate case: the report explains that they participate in Connecticut’s Teachers’ Retirement System rather than the city employee pension plan. Note 10, printed pages 56–57. Do not assume the municipal pension contribution is a bill for retired teachers.
Why are we still paying for old loans?
Borrowing lets a city pay for a long-lasting project over time instead of collecting its whole cost in one year. Debt service is the repayment bill: principal plus interest. Paying it does not necessarily mean a new project is being built this year. School debt is already included in the education pile in our $100 illustration.
Does my property tax pay for all of this?
No. The adopted budget lists $239.33 million in current taxes—about 86% of its funding—and uses $12 million of fund balance. Other revenue helps cover the rest. City budget, printed page 3 and revenue schedule. Fund balance is accumulated money available from earlier years; using it does not make the underlying services free.
That is why our $100 breakdown describes spending priorities. It does not claim that your particular $100 tax payment was placed into nine labeled envelopes.
The simple way to check your own bill
For this budget year, the city rate is 28.67 mills. A mill means $1 for each $1,000 of taxable assessed value. So a $300,000 taxable assessment produces $8,601 a year in city property tax before applicable credits or additional district charges: $300,000 × 28.67 ÷ 1,000. See the budget ordinance and Tax Collector’s explanation.
Use the assessment that applies to your bill. Milford is phasing in the 2025 revaluation over five years. The city’s example moves an assessment from $290,000 toward $400,000 in $22,000 annual steps, starting at $312,000 for the 2025 grand list. Applying the rate to the full new value too early can overstate your tax.
Check your notice against the city’s phase-in worksheet. Future rates can change, too; a phased-in assessment is not a promise of a fixed tax bill.
And keep the sewer charge separate: the Tax Collector collects it, but the Sewer Commission sets the sewer use fee.
Sources checked October 19, 2026. Current spending figures are adopted 2026–27 appropriations, not final expenditures. Pension payout figures are from the financial report for the year ended June 30, 2025. Salary averages and $100 shares are calculations described above.
