A New Britain Superior Court judge has ruled that a Colchester nonprofit providing residential care for adults with severe disabilities is entitled to a charitable property tax exemption that the town wrongly denied for nearly a decade.
A New Britain Superior Court judge has ruled that a Colchester nonprofit providing residential care for adults with severe disabilities is entitled to a charitable property tax exemption that the town wrongly denied for nearly a decade.
Judge Matthew J. Budzik ordered Colchester to reimburse all improperly collected taxes and pay the organization’s legal fees in a decision on April 24, capping more than 10 years of litigation.
Daniel Casagrande, a partner at Cramer & Anderson and corporation counsel for the city of Danbury, led the legal team that secured the victory for his client, The Caring Community of Connecticut Inc. Partners John Tower and attorney Keith Rado argued the case at trial.
The decision has implications for nonprofits across the state, Casagrande said. It establishes that nonprofits serving people with mental health disorders and intellectual disabilities can claim a charitable property tax exemption under Connecticut law — and that municipalities cannot deny it simply because those nonprofits depend primarily on state contracts for funding.
The Caring Community, founded in 1984, operates 19 small group homes across eastern Connecticut — seven of them in Colchester — providing around-the-clock supervised residential care to roughly 92 adults. Its $14 million to $15 million annual budget comes almost entirely from state contracts with the Department of Developmental Services and Department of Social Services. About half of 1% comes from private donations.
That funding structure was at the heart of Colchester’s argument. Town Assessor John Chaponis denied the nonprofit’s exemption applications on the grounds that its near-total dependence on state money made it a state contractor rather than a true charity — and therefore ineligible for an exemption regardless of the work it does. The town claimed the nonprofit owed more than $340,000 in back taxes.
In 2022, Gov. Ned Lamont signed Public Act 22-73, an amendment to the state’s charitable property tax exemption law, adding a specific provision declaring that housing for people with mental health disorders or intellectual disabilities is “an exclusively charitable purpose.” The legislature attached no conditions to that designation, and the judge declined to add any.
Even setting aside that 2022 amendment, Budzik found the town’s argument would still fall short. Connecticut Supreme Court precedent only strips nonprofit status when an organization receives no donations at all and is intended to be entirely self-supporting. The Caring Community has actively solicited donations and received about $143,000 in private contributions between 2013 and 2024 — enough to satisfy that standard, according to court documents.
Colchester also argued that the Caring Community forfeited its exemption claims for 2022 and 2023 by failing to file annual renewal forms with the assessor after its 2021 application was denied. Budzik rejected that argument as well, finding that the state charitable exemption law requires only a filing every four years, not annually — and that the nonprofit met that requirement, court records said.
The group homes in Colchester had been tax-exempt before 2015, when the town stopped granting the exemptions. No other Connecticut municipality has denied the Caring Community the exemption; all 12 of its group homes in other towns currently receive it, court records state.
The nonprofit first retained Cramer & Anderson in 2016. A previous round of litigation — covering earlier tax years — resulted in a 2023 Superior Court decision that went against the nonprofit, based on language in an older version of the state law that limited the charitable exemption to temporary housing, according to court documents. The 2022 amendment removed that restriction.
“After 10 years of litigation and two trials, this decision is a vindication of our client’s status as a charitable entity — and the court is ordering the town to pay our attorneys’ fees and reimburse all taxes paid,” Casagrande said.
