The state’s messy budget situation is causing havoc for cities and towns. In lieu of a state budget Governor Dan Malloy’s executive order decides funding levels. Under that scenario Bridgeport will lose millions in state aid, as the CT Mirror reports:
In the absence of a state budget, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has spared Connecticut’s most impoverished communities from losing their largest education grants, but there are plenty of other lesser grants these towns rely on that will be decimated or scaled back under his executive orders.
>And they add up.
Education grants that help municipalities fund specific things will be collectively cut nearly $65 million throughout fiscal year. These are money for things like after-school and summer programs, longer school hours, reading tutors, English classes for foreign-speaking parents and supports for students with children of their own. Last fiscal year, three-quarters of the funding for these smaller grants that are now targeted for cuts went to the state’s 30 lowest-performing districts.
Bridgeport stands to lose an estimated $8 million throughout this fiscal year–a 3 percent cut in overall state education aid. Hartford and New Haven could each lose an estimated $7 million, Norwalk $5 million and Waterbury $4 million. (See town-by-town here.)
Full story here.
Watch all the same State Reps & Senators will get voted back into office, no? Voters are to blame for continuing to vote for these political career seat-warmers that half-step through important matters that affect Ct. Residents and there towns & cities!
Malloy is the lamest of ducks.
Joe Ganim can’t balance a budget due to low testosterone levels. If he saw fit to trim the municipal payroll, get rid of all the lard positions and no-show jobs there would be a surplus. Better still, if hizzoner saw fit to revoke the centuries-long tax abatements handed out over the years the grand list would be fatter than the golden calf. But noooooooooo, that would piss off the suits at O & G and all the other industrial corporations that have contaminated the city.
In 2013, the decrease in property values represented by the revaluation process so “scared” the Finch regime that they went to Hartford to postpone public notice of this. The bad news became public two years later when over $1 Billion of value disappeared from the TAXABLE GRAND LIST.
Did that 15% decrease cause the Ganim regime new to office to reduce its budgets by a similar amount to avoid a tax increase, especially in the time when they found themselves with lots of unexplained and unresolved fiscal questions? Not at all. Nothing has been said about multiple money transfers, expenditures that went bad, revenues that were not real, and procedures not followed. Why not? Messing with taxpayer money?
Nope, Ganim2 raised taxes, but not to make schools prepared to provide quality educations!! Why have the public safety and attorney’s office been favored with more revenues?? Because of longer term crime trends? NOT!
So now we are into “economic development dazzle” at both ends of downtown Main Street. But has anybody asked about the deals themselves? Can’t hear you? At the end of the day, whichever person does the development, what is the City’s share of the capital returned for sale of property or share of revenue in the form of taxes?? Why is this question not a routine matter? Why is the public not told this immediately? Time will tell.
Cuomo announces cashless tolling at Grand Island, pushes out Thruway leader
By JIMMY VIELKIND
08/22/2017 12:25 PM EDT
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ALBANY — The Grand Island bridges — which carry Interstate 190 from the Buffalo suburbs to Niagara Falls — will adopt cashless tolling by next year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday as he reshuffled some of the state’s transportation leadership.
The governor has been pushing the Thruway, which is operated by a theoretically independent public authority, to adopt cashless tolling across the board. Bill Finch, its executive director, told lawmakers during a February budget hearing that there were “no plans” to do so.
Sources said the declared lack of enthusiasm disendeared Finch, the former mayor of Bridgeport, Conn., to the governor. At Tuesday’s event, Cuomo announced what POLITICO reported in June: that Finch was being pushed out in favor of Matt Driscoll, the former mayor of Syracuse and current commissioner of the Department of Transportation.
Bye, bye Bill.
Lesson 1. You don’t want to F##k with Gov. Cuomo.
Finch for Gov!
*** Time for more city workers personal time give-backs & Union concessions, no? ***