The City Council’s Budget & Appropriations Committee could vote on Mayor Joe Ganim’s spending plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 as soon as May 6. A public hearing on the general fund budget will take place Thursday, 6 p.m. in council chambers.
Ganim’s no-tax-increase, election-year budget may face some modest alterations possibly extra dollars allocated to the school district but not nearly the millions more education advocates argue is needed to avoid major cuts with the built-in annual costs to cover salary increases and other items.
That’s always the rub between holding the line on taxes and minimizing education investment. Ganim’s mayoral opponents may argue we’re not investing enough into schools. Okay, but what will they cut to get there? The other option is raising taxes. The council could wipe out every single one of Ganim’s discretionary appointees and that would not even amount to a half a mill. One mill represents $7 million in a budget of more than $600 million.
And if you’re State Senator Marilyn Moore, one of Ganim’s opponents, you scream too loudly about underfunding schools and the rejoinder is simple. It’s her job, as a member of the city’s legislative delegation to bring home the bacon. What has she done in 10 years to mollify education advocates on that front?
Not much.
Ganim can simply say she wants to raise taxes, I won’t.
Ganim’s two other opponents John Gomes and Lamond Daniels aren’t as vulnerable to the pushback.
Moore will try to claim successes on education funding but most members of the city’s delegation assert privately that she simply takes credit for the work of the majority legislative representatives. She’s not particularly chummy with her Hartford peers.
Moore will need to find an extra gear to rise up as a serious threat to Ganim. She’s last in fundraising and last in organized support. Forget the delusional prattle advanced by Moore’s chicken-little propaganda arm at Bridgeport Generation Now. Its leaders want to run the city and they see Moore as a tool they can control to unlock the bolt to the mayor’s office.
They are no different than the power structure they condemn in the fuel to exert control. They demand transparency from others but won’t release details of who funds the organization. They claim non-partisanship, raise money off of it, then wave pompom on Moore’s behalf. One of the organizations founders Gemeem Davis served as Moore’s campaign manager for her 2019 run. The other Callie Heilmann hosted a fundraiser for her.
This time around they tried to be a little less obvious but the temptation to buoy Moore’s flagging start will rise.
Less than five months from a Democratic primary, something dramatic must occur for Moore’s mayoral fortunes to shift her way.
On ships / boats at sea, May Day is a distress signal of present danger — it’s an emergency.
In socialist countries, May Day is an annual holiday celebrating their economic roots.
But when it comes to politics in Bridgeport, May Day has nothing to do with Marilyn Moore.
An open source for all mayoral candidates and guide to the city council:
Where to find the money indeed! It’s not quite rocket science.
An easy to find the first million dollars would be in Joe Ganim’s newly created slush fund “Bridgeport’s Broken Promise”. Its concept so simple even a Bridgeport Local official could understand it. A child cannot go to college if a child is unsuccessful in grades k-12. With federal and state grants covering the first two years of community college it seems our local tax dollars could be better used for our existing obligations rather than creating new ones. It is no error that these “promise” dollars are a line item in the mayors office. Just where do you think Ganim direct these dollars? Will it be to the children of local officials, children of donors? Hmm.
Now to find the next 4 million dollars. Since Joe Ganim wants to mimic Waterbury promise Bridgeport could mimic the city of Waterbury budget in it’s entirety. https://www.waterburyct.org/filestorage/103431/104943/2023-2024_Mayor%27s_Proposed_Budget.pdf. Click the link and you will find on page 9- 10 that Waterbury gives more tax dollars than education of about 30 million dollars or 50% of its budget. That’s exactly opposite for Bridgeport, of which the city claims only 38% towards education, page 13. https://www.bridgeportct.gov/filestorage/341650/341652/342544/Test_FY23_24_Proposed_Draft__City_of_Bridgeport_Annual_Operating_Budget_BTOC..pdf
So in reality and considering the need of all departments to pay rising fixed costs I do not propose eliminating public safety increase altogether. I propose inverting the numbers of the increase to be like Waterbury (as Ganim seems to want to do by mimicking Waterbury promise) rather than give close to six million dollars to public safety and two million dollars to to Bridgeport give $2 million to public safety and the other $4 million dollars to education and let the public safety department make due with the amount they want the education department to make due with. We have now found five million additional dollars.
Where else to find $$ hold General Gov and public facilities depart at a $2 million increase as well and redirect $2.5 million dollars to education. We now stand at $7.5 million additional increase to the $2 million dollars for a grand total of a $9.5 million dollar increase for education.
That leaves $3 million dollars more to cut from the bloated bureaucracy that is Bridgeport. Surely 3 million dollars could be found. All these proposed revisions to other departments should be a no brainer. After these much smaller departments (whose employee count when combined are far below the number of employees in education) could live with the same $2 million increase that was proposed for education. Surely with the GROWING grand list and tax revenue (if Ganim is being truthful in the budget documents) bridgeport can afford to better fund education it just chooses not to.
I don’t know why it’s relevant but I’ve lived in Bridgeport for over 20 years. More relevant I’ve been able to read a budget and balance sheet for over 30 years.