Cut taxes for “green” cars?

What does everyone think of the idea of dropping car taxes for all vehicles in town that get more than 40 miles to the gallon? It’s at least an interesting idea, right?

West Hartford’s schools are the key to the town’s success

Realtor Amy Bergqist’s wonderful “In the Neighborhood” blog takes aim at the referendum sought by the West Hartford Taxpayers Association. In her post on the issue, Bergquist writes, “While I understand the concern that property taxes will rise by approximately 6.6% for all West Hartford homeowners, I don’t believe cutting the budget is the way to go. West Hartford draws and retains residents because of the perception of excellent services and the public school system it offers. Every weekend I see evidence of this when people from Bloomfield, New Britain, Newington, etc. flood open houses. The reason they are looking to move? ‘I want my kids to go to the West Hartford schools.'”

Something to ponder.

No more mystery from “the responsible center”

It’s time to fess up about the mystery cuts that the town council seems to believe could salvage the Board of Education budget.

So far, we’re getting mere hints and assurances that the $1.5 million the schools need can be found without wiping out Quest, slashing sports, eliminating the extra help our most troubled schools need and so on.

Sorry, but that’s not enough.

The school board has a terrifying list of proposed cuts that would drastically impact the lives on many students, leaving some of them cut off from the extra assistance they need to achieve their potential.

That’s not my idea of “the responsible center,” as the mayor put it to reporters yesterday.

What’s most frustrating is that all we’re hearing from town officials is that we should trust them.

Well, I had a professor once who told us that every time you hear someone in a movie say “trust me” you can bet your life that anyone who puts his faith in those words is going to face a heap o’ hurt.

So permit me to remain skeptical.

I want details.

The schools have told us what they think it takes to save so much money. What are the alternatives?

Here’s what we’ve been hearing so far from officials who may know some answers:

Mayor Scott Slifka told the Courant yesterday that “the council has believed from day one and we still believe that additional administrative savings can be found that will not impact the classrooms.”

“Those ideas may not be on the board list yet, but I’m very encouraged by the fact that the town and board staff have been working together to reach consensus on those issues. And I think that we should all take a deep breath and continue working on this for the benefit of the kids and the taxpayers,” Slifka told the paper.

Former Lt. Gov. Kevin Sullivan, whose commitment to education can’t be second-guessed after all these years, assures us in a comment on another entry that the school board needs to look “for cuts last in what goes on directly in the classroom and first at exhausting every other possible way to reduce expenditures (including ideas that the town administration has been pointing out to the school administration for awhile now.)”

Another fine politician, Chuck Coursey, also assures us in a comment elsewhere on this blog that the town council “believes that there are additional savings in the Board budget that can be achieved without impacting the classroom. I’m pleased that the Town and Board Administration are working together to identify and reach consensus on those areas.”

Slifka told the Courant, as its reporters paraphrased the comments, “that many of the ideas that led to those cuts – such as trimming administrative costs – have been under discussion for a long time.”

“The council is attempting to balance the need to continue investing in the schools, which we are doing, with the significant fiscal impact on the community as a whole. It’s a very difficult balance,” the mayor told the paper.
“The council is in the middle. The board says it’s not enough; the taxpayers contend it remains too high. And the council is right in the middle – the responsible center. It represents that we are trying to balance the competing needs of the community,” Slifka said, according to the Courant.

One final thought: it’s insulting that Slifka more or less says the Board of Education is not in “the responsible center.”

It’s not the job of the town council to plunk itself down in the middle somewhere between what schools need and what self-styled taxpayer advocates urge. It’s the job of our elected leaders to fight for what’s right and to hold down spending to no more than what’s needed.

But what’s needed is what must be allocated, whatever the threats from those who want to pay less. If we’re going to have to defend a budget from tax fanatics, we want a spending plan that doesn’t leave our school system lagging behind.

 

Shame on West Hartford’s council

The last-minute decision to wipe out $1.8 million in school spending without public debate is atrocious, from any perspective.

First off, major policy shifts such as slicing into education should be the result of careful, public deliberations, not the result of panic at a looming tax hike. The eight town council members who went along with this deserve our scorn for their refusal to let us all in on the secret before they took an ax to the school spending plan that had already been carved down carefully by the Board of Education.

But more important is that we have now, as a community, chosen to put less money into our schools than we know they need.

Superintendent David Sklarz told reporters that the reduction could mean larger classes, fewer teachers and other hits to classroom education.

No doubt.

If there’s $1.8 million worth of fat in the school budget, then by all means cut it. And fire the officials who gave us this spending plan to begin with.

I strongly doubt there’s much to be saved without targeting all kinds of necessary programs and services for our students.

Even worse, this fly-by-night decision sends an awful message to everybody: that we don’t care enough about education to make sure it’s fully funded.

Once we start down that road, we’re doomed.

I find it detestable that town council members did this without prior notice and without giving us any better reason that it made this year’s tax hike a little lower.

Our schools are the pride of this town. Our council, I’m afraid, is nothing to brag about. 

Should we be mad about the town’s proposed budget?

An overview of the budget in today’s Hartford Courant provides a taste of the increasingly bitter debate about the spending plan town leaders are going to adopt next week. It’s must reading for anyone who cares.

Although it’s written backwards — correcting misinformation before telling the story itself (an obvious favor to town officials) — it’s still interesting.

Here are some choice points:

* “There’s so much animosity,” Republican council member Joseph Verrengia said. “I welcome a difference of opinion, as long as we have a normal conversation and stick to the issues. But unfortunately there are some who make it personal.”

*  “The council’s focus right now is to try to get this budget increase as low as possible. Whether we do it through forecasting additional revenue, or cutting spending, the delicate balance that the council has to be concerned with is continuing to provide the services that make our town so special,” Verrengia said.

“By having it both ways, it’s a clear indication to me that the taxpayers’ association is just bent on having a referendum,” he said. “Theresa [McGrath] has been advocating for this Proposition 2½, and now she’s changing the rules, late in the game.”

* Mayor Scott Slifka, a Democrat, said that the taxpayers’ group is exploiting the natural anxiety associated with the revaluation of property and that the group this year is an “active arm of the Republican town committee.” Previous leaders of the taxpayers’ group, he said, did not engage in personal attacks and did not align themselves with the minority party.

* West Hartford Taxpayers Association President Theresa McGrath said she has not changed her mind about her proposal. She said the taxpayers’ group is nonpartisan and includes Democrats, Republicans, Green Party members and unaffiliated voters. She also denied engaging in personal attacks.
“It’s disturbing to me that elected officials would try to steer the press to create this personal issue rather than actually addressing the real issue, which is our taxes,” she said.

Jack Darcey, chairman of the school board, agreed that the town’s first property revaluation since 1999, coupled with the annual budget anxiety, has increased the level of tension this budget season.
“It’s sent people into a dither,” Darcey said of the revaluation. “It’s made people very nervous and very, kind of angry and certainly ready to do battle because they feel that what they’re calculating for their taxes is something they cannot afford.”

 —-
In my view, the story is awfully scant on details. It looks like Slifka and Verrengia met with one of the two reporters together to go over “misinformation” — steering the story that way — rather than the reporters seeking out what’s going on and telling us the whole picture. After reading it, I still don’t know what even Slifka and Verrengia think the mill rate will be and how much more we can expect to pay.

Now, I’m willing to see a big increase because revaluation makes that a necessity, unfortunately. But let’s get real and TELL THE PEOPLE what to expect. We’re grownups. We can deal with the facts.

But this story is mostly just an insider shot at the taxpayers’ group, not a genuinely helpful piece of journalism.

Kevin Sullivan’s right about the property tax

Don’t miss former Lt. Gov. Kevin Sullivan’s timely piece on property taxes in The Hartford Courant.

Town faces tax crunch, blogger says

Here’s an interesting take on Thursday’s West Hartford budget hearing at town hall, by a reasonably neutral observer who’s not afraid to say what she thinks – In the Neighborhood blog.

School board backs 5.9 percent hike

From the looks of it, the town’s Board of Education did a good job last night in slicing what it could from a terrifyingly large budget. It made the hard decision to wipe out busing for the paltry 60 students who wanted to take advantage of the new later starting time (a number itself so low that it makes me wonder if all the hoopla was worth it). That saved $240,000. And it maintained our standards by refusing to cut two new teachers needed to keep our high schools adequately staffed. 

West Hartford Taxpayer Association statement

I don’t agree with all of this, but it’s interesting…

 

WEST HARTFORD TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION MAKES STATEMENT ON PROPOSED BUDGET

For Immediate Release

March 14, 2007       

The West Hartford Taxpayers Association met on 3/14/07 at Town Hall and drafted this statement:

“The West Hartford Town Budget must not exceed a 2.5% increase from the 2006-07 current budget, otherwise it leaves no choice to the West Hartford Taxpayers Association but to go to a referendum.”

The President of the Taxpayers Association tried to approach the Town Council with information regarding Proposition 2 ? on two separate occasions, but they were not responsive and found technical excuses for not applying it to our own town budget.

 

Members of WHTA have also been in touch with State legislators regarding their efforts to implement Proposition 2 ? for municipalities from the state. The WHTA also plans to keep citizens updated as to how those initiatives are doing.

The feeling was that town spending has got to be put under control. There has got to be restraint by our leaders. If salaries and other mandated expenses have gone up then we must make cuts elsewhere, or at least initiate no new programs or freeze hiring of staff.

Residents at the meeting thought that the extremely high budget was proposed on purpose so that Town officials could posture for cutting taxes. Some people said, “Why didn’t they just come out with a reasonable budget to begin with? They have been working on this since January. It looks like they say 8.5% so that they can cut it back to 6% and make it look like they are being fair. It’s the same old game they play every year.”

Everyone in attendance was made aware of the current proposed budget that was presented to the Town Council on 3/13/07 by Town manager James Francis. The proposed budget called for an increase of 8.5% which included a 7.6% in the education budget alone. These budget increases were absolutely unacceptable to all taxpayers who were in attendance at the WH Taxpayer Association meeting. Despite the fact that the mill rate is expected to drop because of revaluation from 46.19 to 31.43, the WH Taxpayers Association still sees that as an exorbitant mill rate.

Vice President, Judy Aron said, ” We are glad to see our property values go up. That is wonderful news. The issue at hand though is the spending, and the spending amount which represents the budget is what drives the mill rate and essentially determines our individual tax bill. Right now that proposed mill rate of 31.43 represents a huge increase in tax for many taxpayers when applied to their new assessment. That is just unacceptable.”

Information on the website for the taxpayer group shows that :

Historical West Hartford Tax increases:

2001 – 4.0%

2002 – 5.6%

2003 – 5.6%

2004 – 6.3%

2005 – 4.3%

2006 – 6.0%

      + 31.8% in the past 6 years alone!

Proposed increase for 2007-08 is an additional 8.5%

Historical West Hartford Board of Education Budget increases:

2002-03 – 7.18% 90.96 Million

2003-04 – 4.83% 95.35 Million

2004-05 – 5.75% 100.84 Million

2005-06 – 5.66% 106.55 Million

2006-07 – 6.51% 113.48 Million

2002-07 – 29.93 % in the past 5 years alone ! Averaging 6% for the past 5 years !

According to the Superintendent’s budget presentation, this year (2007-08) they are proposing a 7.59% increase! (That’s 122.10 million dollars more!)

Many people in attendance were very upset that communication with Town Officials has been so quiet and limited. Apparently no one is allowed to speak to the budget issues except at public hearings and many people in general expressed a feeling of being shut out of the process until the public hearings are held. Attendees that had gone for assessment appeals were also very unhappy with the treatment and responses they received from the process.

The West Hartford Taxpayers Association set up several committees, and will be doing some outreach to those families not easily reached via email to inform them of budget update information. They have members who will be examining the presented budgets of the Town as well as the Board of Education. The next full monthly meeting of the WHTA is scheduled for April 23, 2007 at 7:00 PM in Room 400 at the

West Hartford
Town Hall,

50 South Main Street, West Hartford, CT
06107

All are welcome to attend.

The West Hartford Taxpayers Association is non-partisan. WHTA is an association dedicated to the proposition that Town Government can be operated efficiently to provide needed services at a fair cost to the Citizens of West Hartford. It has been in existence since 1933. For additional information visit the West Hartford Taxpayers Association web site at http://whta.org/ or contact WHTA President Theresa McGrath at president@whta.org or 860-570-1203, or WHTA Vice-President Judy Aron at vpresident@whta.org or call 860-523-7257

 

News coverage of West Hartford sucks

If I read today’s West Hartford News correctly, and sometimes it’s not easy, the town council this week adopted the property tax freeze for 500 or so allegedly low income seniors. The lost tax revenue is supposed to be made up from a grant, the source of which is entirely unspecified. There’s no indication whether there’s an asset test involved or if this is a giveaway to rich seniors who don’t have much income. But I’ll give the weekly this: at least it mentioned it. The Courant didn’t tell us squat.

We deserve a lot better than this from our town officials, who have a duty to inform us of what they’re doing, and from the reporters who supposedly cover this town. This is a big, big deal that has been so ignored in the press that it’s seemingly slipped right through without anyone knowing anything about it.

It’s sad and infuriating.

As I’ve said before, I’m not against helping struggling seniors. But without an asset test, this is terrible policy and pure political pandering. It’s unfair to the vast mass of taxpayers.