On Saturday the City Council’s Budget and Appropriations Committee sliced a good chunk from Mayor Bill Finch’s proposed tax increase that will likely be ratified by the full legislative body tonight (Monday) in a meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, 45 Lyon Terrace. Council members face election this year while the mayor does not come before voters again until 2015. It’s important for council members to be on the stump explaining to voters they beat back the mayor’s tax proposal. It’s also likely the city’s budget-making committee lacked the motivation to shave the mayor’s tax increase by roughly two thirds without taxpayers airing out their lungs at public hearings.
The city budget process these days is rarely a given in a difficult economy because the city is a slave to state budget negotiations underway in Hartford. Roughly 40 percent of city revenues come from the state. Historically in an election year city bean counters allow the council room to cut (translation, we’ll pad a bit to give you cover) but when the mayor’s budget proposal reached the council in April the best estimates at the time, according to council members, was shaving the mayor’s tax hike by roughly a third. The mayor’s budget proposal had taxes increasing on the average homeowner by about $400, and much more in higher-taxed areas such as Black Rock, Brooklawn and the North End. If the full council tonight supports the recommendation by the budget committee the tax increase on the average homeowner will be two thirds less than what the mayor proposed.
The budget process became nosier than what some council members expected.
It’s easy for politicians to do what they want, especially when the public’s asleep. If no one’s squawking what’s the point? It’s human nature. In this budget cycle, however, a new community action group calling itself Citizens Working 4 a Better Bridgeport rallied taxpayers to public hearings in protest of pols once again picking their pockets. Building community activism is never easy among the city’s lethargic electorate, it requires resilience of phone calls, emails, flyers urging taxpayers to show up to public hearings and budget committee meetings.
Folks associated with CW4BB are not happy there will be a tax increase. The goal was no tax increase. But suppose citizens aligned with the group–and others who just decided to show up to impress upon council members they cannot afford to give any more–didn’t rally taxpayers to the cause of watching their wallets?
No doubt, taxpayers would be paying a whole lot more.
I was wrong. This budget process will be an austerity-induced document that will require only one vote. (I didn’t say I was bright, did I?)
If I’m going to be a political neophyte, Only in Bridgeport is the place to become a municipal know-it-all.
No doubt eyes on the process and noise made a difference. Still, it is a tax increase and the Council didn’t have the guts to go after any sacred cows. I hope they don’t think they’ve done something really special here. They did a comparatively decent job relative to what they’ve done before and even so, have fallen short of the mark and are still showing their true colors … I’m not impressed.
They did work hard, but they did not cut nearly as deep as they could have. They received myriad suggestions from EXPERTS and still did a marginal job. There was no reason for that other than blatant disregard for what is important. Most vexing to me is why the B&A committee would not make cuts in the Mayor’s office budget. What does he do with those dollars aside from making one selfish and ill-thought-out decision after another? We need a leader in the mayor’s office as well as on the Council, and what we get is a clown riding a bike and investing taxpayer monies in billboards to increase his twitter following. I don’t know if I will be able to make the meeting tonight to hear the fallout, but I am sure it will be colorful.
Tweet THIS, Finch.
*** A DIFFERENCE FROM A MAYOR PROPOSED DEBACLE TO AN ASSUMED LOWER NUMBERS B&A DEBACLE, NO? ***