In about four weeks Mayor Bill Finch will submit his proposed budget to the City Council for the spending year starting July 1 as he seeks a third four-year term with the specter of city revaluation of taxable property kicking in next year. Finch did not raise taxes in 2011, his last election-year budget. This is also an election year for the City Council, following three straight tax increases.
The good news (or bad depending on your perspective) for the mayor is last year Governor Dan Malloy and the Connecticut legislature granted him a two-year reprieve from implementation of revaluation that had projected a major hike in the city’s mil rate from the current 42.198.
Bridgeport has one of the highest mil rates in Connecticut but not the highest according to web stats posted by the State Office of Policy and Management.
East Hartford, New Britain, Waterbury and Hartford all have higher mil rates than Bridgeport. New Haven’s rate is similar to Bridgeport. To compare, wealthy Greenwich is at the low end at about 11 mils, albeit with higher property assessment.
The governor and legislature last year rescued Finch from revaluation’s impact in an election year. Some of the higher-taxed neighborhoods such as Black Rock and North End could have absorbed the reval blow. Implementing reval would have also juiced motor vehicles taxes.
In the current legislative session, lawmakers are weighing two key issues that could provide tax relief to cities, a larger share of reimbursement for tax-exempt property under the state’s payment in lieu of taxes program and uniformity in taxing automobiles. For instance establishing tax rates for cars based on an average state mil rate, say 28 mils. Under such a scenario the state would serve as collection agent on vehicle taxes and hold municipalities harmless in the resulting revenue losses.
Finch’s critics howl that the mayor dodged an election year tax hit that will come next year if reval is implemented.
Connecticut law requires all real estate to be revalued for assessment purposes every five years to bring about uniformity in property values and ensuring everyone pays their fair share. Your property tax bill is a function of your assessment based on 70 percent of value. In a challenging economy property values have sunk so as a general rule the mil rate approved by the City Council will spike to make up for the reduced assessments in order to fund the budget proposed by Finch.
Opponents to delaying reval, including the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, claim it’s poor public policy to put it off. The more frequently reval takes place, the organization maintains, the more accurate and fair tax assessments will be. Opponents also say delaying reval is nothing more than kicking the can down the road in an attempt to hide budget problems.
Finch: Read my lips, no new taxes. Many new programs. Bridgeport getting better every day. Awesome.
Bridgeport is getting Bitter every day!
Oust Finch Now!
If bitterness were a country, Jimfox would be its leader. I encourage him to put success culture on his horizon.
ACF-you promised you wouldn’t
respondtalk to me.After the November election, the mil rate will rise significantly. You can bet on it!!! It’s a sure thing.
By itself, does that mean higher taxes for the residential or small business person. NO. But the way to maintaining our current taxation is to decrease the budget annually by focusing on priority issues and ignoring the rest (what the State will have to do after it sits down, realizes they have run out of accounting tricks like the “quarter-year budget” that Barnes forgot about), and then living within their means. But when have you heard the Mayor talk about cutting costs and verifying with real numbers? And have you looked at City purchases recently? NO? Is it because the Mayor has been silent on BIG PURCHASES? Or is it because the Charter calls for the administration to ask the public annually for input on Capital purchases at a meeting, but that meeting is never held? Why NOT?
And the other CRITICAL part of the fiscal equation is what is the State going to contribute? If they increase the “payments in lieu of taxes” perhaps they will eliminate another critical revenue line item? That is their own practice of “sleight of hand.”
The values of our homes are reduced from 2008 valuations mostly. And the reductions in wealth are not uniform across the community so homeowners should be outraged at Finch and Malloy. Funny to find ourselves siding with the CBIA, isn’t it? So we have lost wealth (and economic development giving up 100% tax dollars with new businesses or property owners for 40 years in some cases does not assist fairness) and face additional property taxes probably because of combined State and City weakness. Don’t like it? There is an election this year. Look for those who show a path to financial sanity. Time will tell.
Some of my neighbors purchase a new Jaguar XK every two years at a cost of $85,000 dollars with just two annual installment payments of $42,500 for their luxury cars.
I’m not so lucky yet, but Bill Finch and this City Council wants us to leave the driving to them, you see my new car is also a very expensive $20,800 car with a two-year payment plan, around $10,400 dollars per year.
All these new cars in my neighborhood have a big problem, we can’t take them for a ride around St. Mary’s because they’re stuck to our foundations … Oh! You say maybe we can sell those cars and move someplace else like Devon where the cars are much cheaper.
I think a lot of people will be selling their new cars this year before the Finch 2016 revaluation.
Just remember folks as Bill Finch will say, “Some car values will go up, and some car values will go down!
So if you’re not a friend of the Mayor or the Chairman of the Board of Assessment Appeals, your new car is going to cost a hell of lot more.
Do we really want Bill Finch and his CC back in the driver’s seat again?
www .youtube.com/watch?v=YOokDxgr0pk
Bridgeport is getting bitter every day!
The Hartford assessment value is not 70% of home value, so of course their mil rate is the highest. If we had the same assessment value, our taxes would be lower, with a cap on the yearly increase.
www .amybergquist.com/HartfordTaxes.php
Looking quickly over the governor’s proposed next two-year budget, there are cuts to Bridgeport funding after this year.
I cannot see how a tax increase is avoided this year, UNLESS the city council budget committee actually does their job and sends the mayor’s budget back to him with at least a minimum 10% across-the-board per-department budget cut.
They’re fine people and entitled to change their minds, but wasn’t there a time when Jennifer Buchanan and David Walker were going to leave Connecticut if Foley wasn’t elected?
My house has been for sale for 11 months with three asking-price reductions. Oh how I wish you were in my rear-view mirror. Idea, you buy my house, live in Bridgeport and I go torture Democrats in another part of the country.
YAAFJ
The tax assessment on my house is based on a market appraisal of $240,000. Give me that figure and I will clear out in a week. How about you, “Local Eyes?” Want to move to Bridgeport?
My house is a two-family, with water views and never flooded, so income and great location. Pick mine, pick mine!
This used to be a political blog but it’s transforming into a real-estate clearing house.
LE–To your point, it speaks volumes about the politics of this city and state.
Finch will do what Finch does every election year, smoke and mirrors with the budget, just to get to November … but soon after that election it will be Bpt’s day of reckoning. And I agree with others, if I could get what my house is appraised for, I’d move out of this city in a second, and that, I’m sure, is the feeling of the majority of us. What was once such a desirable place to live has now become the place people can’t wait to get out of. How sad, really.
I own my house, no more joy in that!
I sometimes wonder about the ratio of homeowners to those who rent.
And to those on subsided housing, welfare, whatever it’s called, I pay this ridiculous tax to house others be it to the state or city or both, to provide for them a roof and food, and that’s okay in a way, but St. Francis I’m not. I think I’m closer in line with that guy Jude, patron of lost causes. I’m a cause, because I’m going broke, my vote means nothing, if I rent and someone else pays for it, I’ll continue to vote for my best interest, me!
Bridgeport, you need prayers and the FBI. I’ll pray for both.
I already own the best piece of real estate in Black Rock and it’s not for sale. Nobody’s done more than I have to make Black Rock a stand-alone seaside village in Connecticut.
www .BlackRockCTUSA.com
LE,
You do not realize how serious the messages are today. And you continue to think it is humorous?
If you own “the best piece of real estate in Black Rock” please tell us what your valuation and assessment is.
Perhaps you are merely being cute but you will be stung with those whom you chose to tease and who have cumulatively lost perhaps $800,000 of value in the past five years. They are being robbed of that value by the way the city operates fiscally … and you choose derision? Time will tell.
Thanks, JML.
John Marshall Lee, the valuation is $13.00 and the assessment is the same. I’m not teasing. I’m just making wise purchases. Digital real estate is part of my DNA.
Not until the Feds stop spending/borrowing will taxes retreat. You have misplaced the responsibility.
Readers misunderstand the role Federal Spending plays in Bridgeport taxes. For example, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were awful news for taxpayers and the bank bailout was just as bad. As we speak, the Federal Reserve has the worst balance sheet in the history of accounting! What Uncle Sam prints on paper, Bridgeport taxpayers have to pay in money. It’s happening all across America, too.
Fifty years ago–in 1965–America started peacetime deficit spending that destroyed our industrial base, which at the time was globally dominant. No city was hurt more than Bridgeport CT USA.
More to come …
America was at war in Southeast Asia in 1965.
Ron Mackey is correct. In my lifetime, all wars have been undeclared; subsequently, many people have called it peacetime deficit spending. Taxes were never raised.
During WWII, Americans were taxed at the 100% rate–that’s what rationing was all about. It was the type of wartime we’ve never experienced.
Think of how different things would be today, if during the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, we were living on rations instead of inflating our currency or borrowing money.
The recent wars have passed on the draft because that would have brought the reality of war into homes that do not want to support undeclared wars. The funding of wars has brought profits to many corporations and ignored needs in other areas. It has also allowed those in office to point in other directions for answers, that has been misdirection. Massive misdirection around the world with worldwide banking. The crash will ignore the too big to fail mantra in many places. It will force survivors to consider what is important and to prioritize and by so doing find a new way out of the messes we find ourselves in. Are we up to the tests we shall be facing? Do we have trusted leaders in place? What are our goals we will stake our flag upon? Time will tell.