Revenues

The main source of revenue for Arlington is the property tax, contributing over 75%. Other important sources are direct aid from the Commonwealth, and local receipts – licenses, permits and fees. These sources are supplemented by unspent funds from previous years (“free cash”), and money drawn from the Town’s stabilization and reserve funds when necessary and available. Below is an interactive visualization of annual revenues that you can drill into to see how much of the town’s income comes from particular sources. The bar chart shows you how revenues have increased over time and you can use the slider on the bar chart to move to either a past year’s revenue or a future year’s projected revenue and explore. The chart at the bottom shows the data that feeds the visualizations. Note that there are metrics on the left that show you the year to year growth in revenue and a link that allows you to download the data as a spreadsheet.