This screwy extended mayoral race has come down to the final week with political operatives fanning out across the city urging on voter energy to turnout for a fourth tally for chief executive.
Vinnie Brand, owner of the Stress Factory Comedy Club Downtown made a final pitch at a fundraiser for Mayor Joe Ganim over the weekend, declaring “You gotta do it one more time.” See video above.
The advance forecast for Feb. 27 looks like a balmy low 50s day with potential rain. Despite the voter fatigue last month’s primary redo won by Ganim over John Gomes outperformed the first vote last September.
Ganim had a favorable week, receiving endorsements from ex opponent Lamond Daniels and Republican candidate David Herz who is on the special general election ballot but nonetheless announced that Ganim is his preferred Democrat. Gomes will appear on the Bridgeport Independent Party line.
Herz had announced weeks ago that he would not seek another run if Gomes did the same in the cause of saving taxpayers about $125,000 to finance another vote. Gomes decided to seek a fourth vote
The smearing, mendacity and revilement on social media and in complaints to the State Election Enforcement Commission is gorging new heights of mudslinging. The Gomes campaign is running on financial fumes. It is flat broke as many donors that helped finance a mighty war chest for three votes have packed up their wallets. Gomes, as a result, is relying on a core of volunteers to provide the grunt work to pull a vote and carpet bomb social media pages with attacks on the incumbent.
While Gomes salvos Ganim on several fronts directly, the mayor is largely relying on rejoinders from surrogates while maintaining a positive message in the home stretch.
Both sides are working absentee ballots to the point that territorial clashes have occurred. More than 1,000 ballots have been returned to the Town Clerk’s Office, a mail-in vote that will likely double in the final week as was the case in last month’s primary redo.
About 70,000 registered voters are eligible for the second general election including more than 20,000 unaffiliated electors, a swath of votes Gomes hopes goes his way to leverage an upset.
An oldie but a goodie – from 2015 ! JUST SAY NO TO JOE by Charlie the Bum. Here’s the link to hear this great song – https://soundcloud.com/charlie-the-bum/just-say-no-to-joe
And Charlie’s follow-up hit – GOODBYE JOE here – https://soundcloud.com/charlie-the-bum/just-say-no-to-joe Both still relevant today.
Are you people nuts?
Have you lost your mind?
Not long ago
This bum robbed you blind
So now he’s back
And he wants your vote
Wake up my friends
And just say no to Joe
Say no to Joe, adios my friend
See ya later, sayonara, goodbye again
Just take a hike, go on, hit the road
See you soon, so long, bye bye
Say no to Joe
I know, I know
He paid his debt
But there’s some things
You just cannot forget
So, shame on him
He fooled you once
Shame on you if you bring him back
And he fools you twice
Say no to Joe, adios my friend
See ya later, sayonara, goodbye again
Just take a hike, go on, hit the road
See you soon, so long, bye bye
Say no to Joe
Well, he’s barely five foot three
He ain’t the biggest guy in town
But man, he’s got some onions
The biggest ones around
Say no to Joe, adios my friend
See ya later, sayonara, goodbye again
Just take a hike, go on, hit the road
See you soon, so long, bye bye
Say no to Joe
See you soon, so long, bye bye
Say no to Joe
Wake up my friends
and just say no to Joe
Can we live with bad roads and sidewalks for another four years?
820 streets in Bridgeport and 640 of them need repair.
Our sidewalks are so bad that Ganim’s sister fell and is now suing the taxpayers of Bridgeport!
So what happened to the money for our streets and sidewalks Joe, your sister wants to know?
It’s time for change!
https://ctmirror.org/2024/02/16/bridgeport-ct-joe-ganim-house-complaint/
From the Connecticut Mirror–
Joe Ganim’s opponents file complaints over mayor’s property taxes
by Andrew Brown and Dave Altimari
February 16, 2024 @ 4:30 pm
This story has been updated.
Political opponents of Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim are raising questions about whether his brother, Tom Ganim, improperly helped to reduce the property taxes on a home shortly after the mayor purchased it in early 2021.
Jack Hennessy, a former Connecticut state legislator who is backing Joe Ganim’s mayoral challenger John Gomes, filed several complaints on Friday related to the mayor’s purchase of a more than 7,000 square-foot home in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport and a subsequent appeal that reduced the taxes on that property by 65%.
The complaints over the property were filed less than two weeks before Joe Ganim and Gomes are set to face off in a new general election on Feb. 27. The two men have been locked in a vicious mayoral campaign that was extended after a judge determined that several Ganim supporters likely violated state election laws by harvesting absentee ballots ahead of the city’s Democratic primary last September.
Joe Ganim purchased the home for $333,000 in January 2021. Property records reviewed by The Connecticut Mirror show the home was initially listed at $699,900 but had been on the market for months when the mayor’s offer was accepted.
Then, after the sale, the taxes owed on the property, at 37 Thorne Place, dropped from $29,000 per year to a little over $10,000, providing a substantial savings to the mayor.
Joe Ganim sold the property for more than $1.1 million last year. Not long before that, the property taxes on the home went back up to over $17,000 per year, due to several improvements he made to the property.
It was known that the mayor’s tax liability on that property was reduced starting in 2021, but records obtained by Hennessy and the Gomes campaign shed new light onto how the property taxes were slashed.
Joe Ganim did not respond to requests for an interview, which were sent to the mayor’s office. But Tiadora Josef, a spokeswoman for the mayor, forwarded an email that was drafted by an official in the Bridgeport Assessor’s office that argued the tax adjustment was handled appropriately.
The complaints that Hennessy sent to the Bridgeport Ethics Commission, the Connecticut Attorney General’s office and Connecticut’s Statewide Grievance Committee, which polices attorney misconduct, focus on two issues with the property transaction.
They question whether it was ethical for Tom Ganim, who is an attorney, to represent Mary Daley, the woman Joe Ganim purchased the home from.
The complaints also question how Tom Ganim was able to challenge the tax assessment on the property on behalf of Daley after she had already sold the property to the mayor. The complaint cites a Connecticut law that states only the individuals or entities paying the taxes on the property can appeal an assessment.
City property records show Daley signed over the deed for the house to Joe Ganim on Jan. 14, 2021. The next day, Tom Ganim filed paperwork with the city on Daley’s behalf to challenge the tax assessment on the property.
The document that Tom Ganim filed with the Bridgeport Assessor’s Office claimed that the assessed value of the property was drastically inflated and should be reduced. And as evidence for that claim, he cited the purchase price that Joe Ganim agreed to pay for the house.
The document does not mention that the mayor was the purchaser of that home.
“The assessed value far exceeds the true property value. The property just sold on 1/14/2021 for $333,000,” wrote Tom Ganim, who signed the document on the line reserved for the listed owner of the property.
Tom Ganim did not respond to emailed questions for this story that asked why he filed the tax appeal, how he came to represent Mary Daley and why the document doesn’t mention that his brother had purchased the property, which is located near the shoreline in Bridgeport.
Hennessy’s complaint asks how Tom Ganim — or Daley — had standing to contest the tax bill on the property, since the house was already sold to Joe Ganim by that point.
“It is extremely questionable why Mary Daley would care about the value of her home the day after it was sold,” the written complaint states. “It seems highly unethical, based on attorney-client relationships, that the brother of the buyer would represent the seller’s best interest in a real-estate transaction.”
The timing of the tax appeal, Hennessy said, calls into question who Tom Ganim was actually representing when he petitioned the assessor’s office: his client or his brother.
“This windfall savings only benefited the new homeowner, Mayor Joseph Ganim,” Hennessy wrote in the complaint.
The email that the mayor’s office sent to the CT Mirror in response to questions about this story argued that there was nothing out the ordinary about the tax revision on the property, and it suggested that Ganim did not receive any benefit that wasn’t available to other taxpayers in Bridgeport.
That email, which was written by William Gaffney, the city’s part-time assessor, said the tax reduction on Ganim’s property was a normal part of a city-wide property tax revaluation that took place in Bridgeport in late 2020.
Any property owner who was paying taxes in Bridgeport, Gaffney said, had the same opportunity to challenge the tax assessments on their homes and businesses around that time.
The property taxes on 37 Thorne Place, Gaffney explained, were ultimately reduced after the assessor’s office inspected the property and agreed that it “required significant renovation/remodeling at the time of the transfer.”
But Gaffney’s email, which was sent to Ken Flatto, the city finance director in February 2023, does not mention that the property they were discussing was owned by the mayor, nor does it address whether it was proper for his brother to petition the city for the tax reduction.
It’s unclear who within the city conducted the inspection on the mayor’s property before the taxes were reduced. Tom Ganim’s request for an informal hearing was approved by someone with the initials “MF,” the documents show.
The complaints that were filed by Hennessy on Friday allege those initials belong to Michael Fazio, a partner with Municipal Valuation Services, the company that was paid to perform the revaluation on all of the properties in Bridgeport in 2020.
Fazio did not return a phone call or email for this story.
This isn’t the first time that Ganim’s ownership of the house in Black Rock has drawn public attention.
The Connecticut Post previously reported that Ganim violated the city’s ordinances by listing the house as a short term rental. The Post also reported on Ganim’s failure to obtain building permits for the improvements that were made to the house.
But the allegations over how the taxes were adjusted on the property could be more serious for Ganim, who returned to the mayor’s office in 2015 after serving a seven-years prison sentence on federal corruption charges.
Bridgeport residents pay some of the highest property tax rates in Connecticut, according to data collected by the state.
Clarification
This story was updated to reflect that it is unclear when Tom Ganim initially requested an informal hearing on the Thorne Place property’s assessment.