We’re asking what you think Joe should do. Feel free to add a comment if you’d like to conjecture about what Joe will do.
Angry homeowners unloaded on Mayor Joe Ganim and the City Council about the latest tax increase. What do you think Ganim should do?
- Throw in the towel; ask the state for a financial control board. (60%, 186 Votes)
- Ride it out, just don't raise taxes anymore. (26%, 81 Votes)
- Rebate the most impacted taxpayers using the $4 million the city will receive from Sacred Heart University for selling golf course property. (14%, 43 Votes)
Total Voters: 310
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If the state government of Connecticut, run by Stamford-serving Dan Malloy and his band of incompetents, weren’t the quintessential, dysfunctional governmental entity North of the Mason-Dixon Line, “Throw in the towel; ask the state for a financial control board” would be my choice of what Mayor Ganim should do, but …
In the context of the foreboding BUT, I would recommend Mayor Ganim assemble an advisory group consisting of BRIDGEPORT TAXPAYERS having recognized acumen in areas related to economic development, real estate, finance, business management, law, politics, education, psychology, sociology, et al., ASAP, and task that advisory group with creating a proposal (in terms of a 5-year plan) for FEDERAL aid directed at:
1) Stabilizing the remnants of the Bridgeport tax base through direct tax relief;
2) Creating an economic development plan with access to federal dollars and technical assistance, such plan having grand-list/tax-dollar-value and jobs-numbers goals such that specific industries and even companies are targeted for the establishment of operations in Bridgeport;
3) Establishment of federal oversight of Connecticut state development planning/policy such that state policy that undermines the socioeconomic viability of the state’s urban centers even as it undermines certain regions of the state while favoring others would be federally mitigated. (There are various federal laws and policies in place which could be leveraged in this regard in terms of federal dollars accessible by the state.)
Essentially, I would advise Mayor Ganim to request the involvement of persons such as John Marshall Lee, David Walker and others, for a total of 15-20 Bridgeport taxpayers who could put a plan together, in short order, that would have a chance of inducing key players in Washington to advocate for massive federal aid to Bridgeport toward accomplishing the reestablishment of socioeconomic viability in our city. Two other parts of this plan would consist of;
i) the creation of a financial review board, backed by federal auditors, that would monitor Bridgeport revenue generation and use as it also monitored the use of any federal monies involved in the aforementioned plan;
ii) the creation of a revenue generation committee which would look at city/state tax policy/statute as it examined areas by which city revenue could be enhanced in terms of a redistributed tax burden geared toward fairness and logic (e.g., polluting, tax-base-devaluing businesses, such as regional waste storage/waste transfer operations, would be assessed for such things as city infrastructure degradation, tax base devaluation, and harm rendered by pollution in addition to normal property taxes.)
But it shouldn’t be BPT taxpayers. They would have a conflict of interest. It must be an impartial group. For example: JML and DW may not be as quick to raise taxes because that would negatively affect them. Ron Mackey and Don would do all they could to preserve retiree benefits. It should be someone from far away so as to make the best choice with the smallest, overall impact to everyone.
Maybe some firm from Greenwich. They have a lot of money managers down there.
Raising taxes is a function of a GRAND LIST that is decreasing, stable or increasing compared to a BUDGET APPROVAL each year that lowers, remains stable or increases the APPROPRIATIONS for the year ahead. Dave Walker has regularly stated the way to TAX STABILITY is to GROW THE TAX BASE/GRAND LIST faster than you increase the BUDGET.
Allow a handful of taxpayers familiar with budgets here in the City to sit with the paperwork handed to the City Council and get the City to acknowledge what they put out, knowingly, in error, different from years past making Council members struggle, at a time of deficit with all the revenues coming into the City departments, some of which have been practically and steadily ignored in years past by City and auditors.
It’s not about my taxes, fellow citizens and BOE SPY. Have you seen me complain about my situation personally? No, I am seeking fairness across the board, to eliminate lies and other dishonesty in City reporting that continues corruption in a City with inadequate resources. I care about getting to a level playing field where I can see, annually and in multi-year displays, the trends in expenses, operating and capital, and all the sources of revenue including fees, cash payments, grants, etc. that are currently not fully shown to decision makers. And I also want disclosure of capital bonded projects with timetables and fund balances so we can see what we are getting and how well plans are delivered. Too much to ask after five or six years seeking same? Time will tell.
I am sure that is true but you must be familiar with the term ‘appearance of impropriety.’ As one of the people who has railed against BPT conflict of interests, do not get yourself embroiled in one.
Aren’t you being just a bit too precious? Or is this your sense of humor? Finance boards in towns all around are peopled with residents who are taxpayers. Their addresses are known, their interests are identified, their valuations are part of public record. What can a member of a finance review board do in the name of this hypothetical conflict you discuss?
If you wish to talk off the record you can call me at 203-259-9642. There are other City ‘connected’ folks who so desire. I assume that is why you have kept your real identity hidden.
Am appearance of impropriety in Bridgeport would have to be pretty large to deter anyone today, wouldn’t you agree? The fact the local DTC favored Tom McCarthy over the incumbent Marilyn Moore explains my reasoning. McCarthy never understood real conflicts, forget about appearances of impropriety. Call me if you wish your hidden identity to remain hidden but wish to discuss the issue further. 203-259-9642. Do you want me to relist his actual conflicts once again or is that like fingernails on a blackboard as Steve Auerbach once complained? Time will tell.
John, I would think you and Dave would be a good choice for the finance board. Would Ron Mackey think Dave would be fair and impartial? How about a board member who has experience with city governance? Maybe Tom McCarthy or Sherwood? How about Flatto or Ganim himself? Once people in town start picking other people in town you will inevitably get members of the machine and/or the lunatic fringe who serve special interests. Sure there will be some ‘window dressing’ (like you and DW) but the meat of the group will be made up of self-serving political hacks. Once ‘they’ have permission to choose one city resident ‘they’ can pick any city resident. If the DTC wanted to give up their hold on city finances they could just not field a candidate.
Then you should consider people are going to NOT get some or all the things they want. When this happens they are going to cry and cry and cry foul. Then you become a self-serving Black Rocker or a property-tax-concerned homeowner. It does not have to be true, just implied.
You must believe there is, at least, one other person in the world who can do what you do. Then, are there a few people who can do it? If BPT gets those people and they have no personal or political interest in how BPT’s finances go as long as they go well, that board’s choices will be generally well accepted and respected. I mean what would you do that any other finance guy would not do?
This applies specifically to NY but is interesting info on Financial Control Boards.
www .nymuniblog.com/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-financial-control-boards-but-were-afraid-to-ask/
Who in hell are you?
This is satire like your parking meter post, right?
Black Rock 170!
Give the guy a chance. If memory serves me correctly, didn’t he raise taxes in JG1 when he first took over from Moran? He then held the line. That was without a $20 million deficit. Obama was constantly pointing at Bush and saying it’s not his fault and folks ran with that narrative. Ganim apparently has to perform miracles and fix all of Finch’s mistakes six months into his term.
The Phantom–Ed Adams, Ken Flatto or some other Ganim appointee probably–get back to work!
Pete Spain–whiner who was too stupid to move out and now has deal with the consequences. I think PT Barnum had a famous line about you. What was it again?
Wow Phantom, that’s a really positive and productive angle. Someone who thinks the city’s been driven into financial quicksand by a 1-year 29% mil rate increase is a “whiner?”
Being that we pretty much just moved in, from Fairfield, several years ago, I think you might want to get your head out of your rump, and try your real name if you can stand by your words and your identity. I know, that’s asking a lot of a “Phantom.” Coward.
Pete,
Please remember the Phantom is a city employee who does not live in the city. What can you expect from him?
See? As per my ‘people will accept the 54 mil rate and Ganim will cut taxes before the next election to get re-elected.’ People are already starting to capitulate and genuflect to the new way. Your taxes and city job cuts are funding Ganim’s re-election. FOUR MORE YEARS.
Phantom–please share this message to your boss. Joe, you absolutely kicked the can down the road your first term by also putting off the re evaluation for eight years. This is NOT due to any other past administration except your own. You borrowed $350 million, lost half of that in the market and we are still paying for that decision of yours. The citizens have NO CONFIDENCE in you or your policies. No one has seen any PROOF of the $20 million deficit you claim. With your $160,000 salary and $2300 tax bill you absolutely have no IDEA how the citizens struggle to pay their bills. You want support, understanding and a chance to prove yourself, get a financial control board in place and let them tell the citizens the true state of finances. What do you have to lose by doing that?
The Ganim four-year master plan.
First year = raise mil rate 29%
Second year = raise mil rate less than 2%
Third year = raise mil rate less than 1%
Fourth year = (reelection) Bill Finch ’em! Zero tax increase
Secede, Black Rock!
I am with Jim Fox. The City Council members who voted for this debacle are up for re-election in 13 months. Do not forget this.
I asked John Marshal Lee to request a motion be made to suspend the public speaking limit of only six speakers. The rule could have been suspended with a two-thirds vote.
Tom McCarthy said “we are following the rules” and moved along. He is not a King. The other 19 council members should have taken it to a vote.
What Tom McCarthy demonstrated in that moment is he has no respect for the very constituents he serves. The height of arrogance.
Thanks, Maria. Are you still my girlfriend?
The truth is Ganim lied about taxes, transparency and accountability during his campaign. He also acted arrogantly in connection with the budget/mil rate process and in handling the taxpayer protest Tuesday night. Many Mayors and City Councils are responsible for where we are today, including Ganim. This is not his first term. He did little to nothing to address the systemic financial challenges facing Bridgeport during his prior tenure. In addition, his most recent budget makes things worse, not better! It also fails to address our systemic financial challenges. His prior corruption convictions have tarnished the City’s image and they present a significant obstacle to attracting major developers. In addition, neither the Mayor nor any City Council member would be deemed to be a “financial expert” by the SEC. We need an independent Financial Control Board that can address our serious structural challenges based on prudence, not politics. This is our only real chance to avoid bankruptcy and/or continued tax increases.
Let’s try this again, what in hell is an independent Financial Control Board by law and what are the details?
Are you ready to come to meet and discuss the subject or do you just snap your fingers and expect others to jump? Let’s try this again, with more respect, sir?
Otherwise Google your own answers. Most of us are not retired and have other things than answer the man with most of the answers prepared before he reads the info. Peace. Time will tell.
Amen!
JML, no, that’s David Walker who has all the answers, he knows everything and you guys in Black Rock listen and follow whatever he tells you guys to do. Hey, I’m just one guy who makes comments, people can listen or pay no attention to anything I write.
John, I would be sitting in the back of the City Council chambers when Ernie Newton was the Council President. When Ganim became mayor and Lisa was the Council President I would sit there until the meetings were over with nobody else sitting there unless it was Brad Durrell who was a reporter for the Bridgeport News. We would talk about everything. John, I was on the DTC for seven years and DTC vice chairman for two years and in 1999 I ran for the City Council and lost in the 130th district. During that same time I was on the Board of Seaside Village, a executive board member of Local 834 firefighters union, President of the Firebird Society of Bridgeport, plus being a Lieutenant in the Bridgeport Fire Dept. So John, I’ve put in my time, now it’s time for you and others to get involved.
I am involved and you know it. And I have been for years in ways different from those you have presented, but they were ways to serve the community, available to me at the time, and met my needs. You and I are of similar age, I believe. I may be older. Just because you have counted yourself out of current affairs and content to throw history lessons sometimes and tomatoes at other times does not provide a reason for us not to meet occasionally for coffee and conversation. You like conversation, although a blog seems more tuned to broadcast than discussion. I am always up for conversation. Give it a try. Time will tell.
The devil may often be felt in the details. Are you ready to deal with that, take a chance? Time will tell.
FY2016 has closed. We need to wait for the fourth Friday in July for a monthly financial report from the City showing the ACTUAL deficit for the year, fellow taxpayers. If this report follows the precedent since 2012, it will be marked DRAFT. (There are any number of possible adjustments necessary to be made by Finance Office in July and August to reach a fair statement of “WHAT HAPPENED” before they turn the books over to external auditors around Labor Day.)
In 2013 a Council member with smarts and courage asked for a FINAL rather than DRAFT copy of the 2013 operating budget and was told to wait for the audit to become complete. She asked in December and received the FINAL copy, for the benefit of all of us, by February and we were able to see for the first time in more than two decades the real budget picture. We saw line items of accurate revenues and see where over or under estimating was at work. We also saw where GHOST EXPENSES had been hidden and where other significant overruns in departments, like overtime, plagued the City. And finally we were able to see where TOM MCCARTHY as DOG WALKER for a compliant Council showed our ‘supposed watchdogs’ on leash and collar how to spend almost $30,000 of taxpayer money as gifts to local charities, with the identity of the Council person prominent, and no thanks to the taxpayers of Bridgeport. An illegal action? I think so and have so reported frequently. But it is a FINAL MONTHLY FINANCIAL REPORT for FY 2015 that I have asked KEN FLATTO, Finance Director, for more than once and have also asked SCOTT BURNS, co-chair of Budget and Appropriations for. So far I have been denied in conversations and in writing. Is there progress in getting this for the last full year of the FINCH ADMINISTRATION when so much was done secretly?
And the May, 2016 report shows City revenues projected nearly $3.6 Million more than the adopted budget. Expenses at the same 11-month period project $7 Million negative variance. Does that mean the $20 Million deficit, oft reported by the City, has shrunk to maybe $4 Million net???
How about an answer from the City? I am aware of the effect for budget purposes of the bond refunding that moved $3.5 Million of pressure this year and of a Pension contribution deferral for a couple years that may have saved another $4.5 million, but that adds to only $8 Million. What else shrank the deficit? Anybody care to guess? Time will tell.
Fellow Bridgeport bloggers: Please do not pay attention to anonymous and out-of-town blogger/dissemblers. The only voices that are relevant and count in addressing Bridgeport issues are Bridgeport voices and those of our elected officials/representatives.
We Bridgeporters collectively have the solutions to our municipal problems as well as the power by which to implement them. A solid indication of that truth was the sociopolitical phenomenon witnessed at the City Council meeting this Tuesday.
Hopefully Mayor Ganim and our other city elected and appointed officials, as well as our state and federal representation, realize the city is in crisis and at a political boiling point (indeed, a turning point) and will determine to enlist the expertise and wisdom from within our populace to create a plan to redeem this city.
I hope the Administration sees fit to move quickly to enlist local talent in creating and implementing a rescue plan for the city, before the situation evolves to a point where the state and federal government move preemptively in response to the intensifying political-economic crisis unfolding here.
It’s time for decisive action, Mr. Mayor! (I can also share residents from other overtaxed areas of the city that the new tax bills were an item of discussion among unhappy Lake Forest residents in recent days and at last night’s LFA meeting (albeit only as discussion between neighbors, not as an item addressed as any part of the meeting.)
Come on, Joe! It’s time to confront our reality in a decisive way. The state can’t, won’t, help us, so we have to march on Washington in some effective fashion. Rally the residents. It’s a presidential election year. There’s leverage in our votes! Put a plan together, as suggested, and take it to Washington before this city falls apart under your watch.
I should have qualified the EDD search criteria by stipulating the search shouldn’t include Connecticut or the NYC metro area, which are tainted by the present regional political machine which is interested only in maintaining a socioeconomic status quo with respect to that geographic area. (Thus, the economic growth and prosperity of Connecticut being compromised in order to preserve the preeminence of the Stamford-Greenwich economic development catchment area.)
But you said ‘Bridgeporters collectively have the solutions to our municipal problems.’ Then you say ‘search(es) shouldn’t include Connecticut or the NYC metro area.’ Why is one good for one and not both?
If Bridgeporters could solve the problem, how did they create it in the first place?
*** The State has no extra cookie jar money to bail out Mayor Ganim and the city of Bpt with their high tax rates. So eat the crow Joe and remember you owe Black Rock a major payback some way, some how, no? ***
In response to the following posting:
BOE SPY // Jul 7, 2016 at 9:23 pm
But you said ‘Bridgeporters collectively have the solutions to our municipal problems.’ Then you say ‘search(es) shouldn’t include Connecticut or the NYC metro area.’ Why is one good for one and not both?
If Bridgeporters could solve the problem, how did they create it in the first place?
===
BRIDGEPORT DIDN’T CREATE THE REGIONAL MESS IT HAS BEEN ASSIGNED TO CLEAN UP. BRIDGEPORT DIDN’T INVENT THE OFF-SHORING OF US JOBS AND THE DISMANTLING OF ITS TAX BASE. BRIDGEPORT DIDN’T OFFER TO SUBSIDIZE THE ASCENT OF THE SUBURBS, NOR DID IT PLAN AND CREATE THE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT HAS UNDERMINED THE ECONOMIES OF THE URBAN AREAS TO THE GAIN OF THE SUBURBS.
BRIDGEPORT DIDN’T INVENT ELITISM AND GREED, BUT IT HAS BEEN FORCED TO SUBSIDIZE AND ACCOMMODATE BOTH.
BRIDGEPORT CAN ONLY BE FAULTED FOR TAKING SO LONG TO RECOGNIZE THE TREACHERY AND DUPLICITY OF THE POLITICAL/ECONOMIC SYSTEM/REGIONAL FORCES THAT HAVE ENGINEERED ITS DECONSTRUCTION AND EXPLOITATION AND GENERALLY MARGINALIZED THE CITY.
NOW, IT SEEMS AS IF BRIDGEPORTERS FINALLY HAVE A HANDLE ON WHAT HAS BEEN INFLICTED UPON THEM FROM WITHOUT AND WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO TO REGAIN THEIR MUNICIPAL WELL-BEING, WHICH INCLUDES AN IMPOSITION OF STRUCTURE AND DISCIPLINE FROM WITHIN. NOW THEY REALIZE THAT, HAVING BEEN RED-LINED BY THE REGIONAL POLITICAL/ECONOMIC ESTABLISHMENT, THEY HAVE TO LOOK WITHIN, AND BEYOND THE REGION/STATE, FOR SOLUTIONS.
NOW THAT BRIDGEPORTERS HAVE FINALLY ALLOWED THEMSELVES TO FEEL AND ACT ON A COLLECTIVE ANGER, THE WISDOM AND WILL OF THE CITY WILL BE DIRECTED TOWARD REDEMPTION OF THE CITY’S FORTUNES, IF NOT RETRIBUTION FOR ALL THE YEARS OF ABUSE FROM THE REGION’S ELITE AND THEIR POLITICAL LACKEYS.
WHILE SOME BRIDGEPORTERS WOULD, UNDERSTANDABLY, SEEK TO DISASSOCIATE FROM BRIDGEPORT AND ESTABLISH POLITICAL AFFILIATION WITH A NEIGHBORING TOWN, ONCE THE DUST SETTLES AND REALITY STEERS THEM TOWARD RESONANCE AND COOPERATION WITH FELLOW BRIDGEPORTERS IN DESIGNING/IMPLEMENTING SOLUTIONS TO ADDRESS THE BRIDGEPORT DILEMMA SET, THE COLLECTIVE WISDOM AND POWER OF THE PEOPLE OF BRIDGEPORT WILL BE ABLE TO BE APPLIED THEREIN.
THEN, BRIDGEPORT WILL BEGIN ITS COMEBACK AND OUR DETRACTORS WILL HAVE TO LIVE WITH THEIR ENVY AND REDUCED SUBURBAN CIRCUMSTANCES.
You supported Ganim and his master plan. How is that working out for ya? BPT did create this problem. BPT elected the POLITICAL LACKEYS who made the policies. BPT is still governed from within. If you elected the leaders who put you where you are, YOU MADE THE PROBLEM. Is that the WISDOM AND POWER OF THE PEOPLE OF BRIDGEPORT you are talking about?
All your conspiracy theories are just that. There is no evidence any of this is happening. Your theories simply use the effect to determine the cause.