The FY2024 levy limit may be underestimated in the Budget Book, due to a very low "New Growth" estimate

This all refers to the updated "Lancaster FY2024 Budget Book" released on Monday, March 6th. (LINK)   

The FY2024 budget book and executive summary suggest that the town approve an override to increase the FY2024 levy limit by $1.3 million.   One of the estimates in that budget is the FY2024 levy limit: a component of that limit is an adjustment for "New Growth", and the value currently used as a placeholder would be 33% lower than the lowest adjustment in the past 20 years.    

Because of that very conservative estimate, the budget may be underestimating the FY2024 levy limit and overstating the override needed for the FY2024 budget.

The calculation for the levy limit in the current fiscal year is included on page 135 of the budget book:

The town's levy limit is increased 2.5% each year.  The "new growth" adjustment is added to that:  the town calculates the assessment it would have collected from the increase in the town's tax base from new construction and improvements, and exempt property returning to the tax roll.  (Property valuation changes due to the market aren't included in this value.)  

The growth values Lancaster reported over the past twenty fiscal years are available from the Department of Revenue:

Although it varies widely from year to year, the town has never reported a new growth value lower than $143,828.    (2010)    The average and median over that time are roughly $300K.

The FY2024 budget book used an estimate of $100K for the "new growth" value when estimating the FY2024 levy limit.   That would be 33% lower than the town has experienced in the past twenty years.  It doesn't provide any rational for that estimate, so there's no way to know if it's based on data the town has collected.

Using the 20-year median and average value of $300K to estimate the FY2024 levy limit would increase the town's levy capacity without an override by $200K.   That would reduce the override amount needed for FY2024 by more than 20%.

The FY2024 "new growth" estimate in the budget book seems unreasonably low.   The town could strengthen it's request for a $1.3 million levy limit override by providing some rationale for that very low "new growth" estimate,  otherwise it seems entirely possible that the override amount needed for FY2024 could be overstated by up to 20%, or even more, when the true new growth value is used.