Finch: Bridgeport Boom Town

WFSB 3 Connecticut

Appearing on Dennis House’s Face The State Sunday morning show, Mayor Bill Finch provided an update on the state of the state’s largest city, declaring it a boom town with new school construction, job creation and new housing. He said his biggest accomplishment in now his eighth year in office is restoring the public’s trust in light of “Corrupticut.”

Finch is seeking a third four-year term this year with several potential candidates on the horizon. He’ll be well financed for his run with already $300,000 in his campaign warchest. See video from Finch interview.

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14 comments

  1. Mayor Finch has been in office eight years and does not use a single metric except from the FBI on the decrease in violent crime to support his mantra about the “City getting better every day.”

    I truly wish I could see a comprehensive assessment that would lead me to the same conclusion. For the past five years however, I find Bill intolerant of constructive criticism and unwilling to attempt to convert those like me who look at the fiscal facts each year and ask questions that go unanswered by the City and by his claimed “great City Council.” (There are more than a handful of current Council members who do return phone calls and emails and address concerns of the people in their District. That is necessary and expected work. That is what I call “grassroots representation” and those who do this deserve commendation.) However, there is a task the 20 Council persons do not address and that is representing the entire body politic going into the future and check and balance the excesses of the Executive Branch. The Council fails to exercise minimal oversight even when serious matters are brought to their attention, because they can ignore that, in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office at this time. Everybody goes along to get along. And the taxpayer is not in the driver’s seat and no one represents him.
    In the talk to FACE THE STATE, near the end of his talk I heard the Mayor reference “the poor people who pay taxes.” Truer words were never spoken, but he leads the victimization process.

    **** Revaluation is conducted in 2013 in time for a posting on October 1, 2013. The Mayor seeks and finally gets the authority to ignore the results although using $300,000 of taxpayer money and will set the process in motion to have revaluation presented to the public right after this year’s municipal election. Poor taxpayers, like former Mayor Fabrizi requests info on his own property, has to use Freedom of Information process, is denied by the City and has to appeal to State FOI? Poor taxpayers, you bet.
    **** The City trumpets “boom town” because there are some cranes up at Steelpointe, at schools and creating new housing. But what is the economic impact? Necessary school buildings are adding to City debt, pay no taxes, and the School Building Committee is not listed on the City web site as to meetings, agendas, etc. Chair of SBC is Councilman Holloway who generally does not let members of the public (taxpayers, as an example) speak assuming the SBC operates on Council rules, rather than Robert’s Rules. Is he correct? Poor taxpayers? Privatized management providing us with more, better, faster? Or are the metrics of the past eight years really unknown to the community?
    **** Poor taxpayers? Even the theoretically largest taxpayer who has gone to court over the past eight years for a reduction in their valuation and assessment, continues to be unhappy inasmuch as the City experts hired to defend fail to sustain the City valuation, missing by $100,000,000. What if that lower valuation is sustained in the CT Supreme Court and the Net Taxable Grand List is reduced by that amount? Will the burden on individual taxpayers increase? Poor taxpayers?

    Bass and entrepreneur Morris do not promise respite worth any meaning to current taxpayers because of the structure of the deal. Hunters and outdoorsmen will not be the savior of Bridgeport in that sense even if three million come to the site as a destination.

    If this talk today is about how Bill Finch has restored trust in government, his argument explodes on him, that is, goes BOOM, when he cannot point to the increase in jobs (except at City Hall where political appointments are popular); when no one bothers to provide answers about 15 City Council persons making political and charitable contributions from taxpayer money for which the City received no services and other such subjects; when outside attorneys, in addition to a full staffing are inadequate to the task and routinely cost the taxpayers $100,000 to $250,000 for Wheelabrator (largest taxpayer) representation annually and multiple other projects.
    Already at risk of criticism I have written too many words, I shall stop now, but more people have to ask their Council representatives who is taking care of the big issues in the City and where they can see indications of good process including OPEN, ACCOUNTABLE and TRANSPARENT governance. Time will tell.

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  2. This is embarrassing. Can you imagine someone seeing Bill Finch talking about “boom” town USA and then driving through Bridgeport on I95? A total embarrassment. For a town and a mayor.

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  3. In fairness to Bill, he had to say those things about our city “booming,” he was doing a TV interview for God’s sake. What else could he say? “I gave a longtime supporter of mine a $500,000 driveway” or “I hired a friend of mine to a job I made up, making sure potholes were filled correctly” or “I successfully delayed the reevaluation to after election day”? Of course not.

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  4. And Bridgeport hasn’t been a boom town since the end of the Vietnam War. All the factories of substance are gone and their names are legion and legend. The downtown is a pigeon roost with no parking, no substantial retail, no substantial development. The East Side is Dresden after WWII. Taxes are through the roof with less services from the city. The city council is a rubber stamp for Adam Wood’s idea of progress. And Finch is no more than an empty suit who has absolutely no clue.

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  5. “Boom” is usually considered a term in relationship to another state of being. Before the cannon goes off there is relative ‘silence’ and then the piece is fired and there is a ‘boom.’ Or births trend along at low rates in the US until demographers look at the years between 1946 and 1964 and name those born during that period ‘baby boomers.’

    Fiscally there are boom-bust cycles of note. And that is where the Mayor’s use of the word boom may gain some understanding. During the 1940s when we were the Arsenal of Democracy turning out guns, machinery, etc. with factories over full employment, etc. things were booming. Peacetime, a flight to profitable sites in southern states or outside US borders brought us to ‘busted’ factories, brownfield sites and economic development running in reverse (building houses and schools is not development in terms of economic sustainability, but if the public will buy the story, keep telling it).

    Mayor Finch has put his fancy factory to work overtime and sped up his “vision” of Bridgeport. He can identify the buildings to be built, the developers with their five-year plans, the State funds coming in for more affordable housing units (while foreclosures of condos and single-family homes runs rampant and lowers residential values). The rapidity of the movie Bill Finch sees has him calling the vision a BOOM. The assembled numbers and direction of the Net City Taxable Grand List would record BUST. Take a serious look at all the issues raised this year when the numbers come out from the audit. Hear any SONIC BOOMS or are we staring at a MARKET BUST? Metrics? Facts? Time will tell.

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  6. McCarthy last month. “The world is taking notice of Bpt because Starbucks has agreed to come here.” Ahahah, maybe one of the five most insane comments of this admin’s time.

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