Mayor Joe Ganim posted some highlights of his budget proposal to the City Council including holding taxes flat, a tax cut for senior citizens and money to hire more cops in a department struggling to keep pace with retirements and defections to other departments.
The tax rate is essentially the same as when Ganim returned to the mayoralty in 2015 but storm warnings are in the air with a flat grand list of taxable property that budget forecasters hope grows next year with some development projects coming on line including the Honey Locust Square construction in the East End.
Budget season will also be tricky next year with implementation of revaluation and how that curves between commercial and residential properties.
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Mayor Ganim,
I seriously question how you frame your budget narrative. The budget you presented to the City Council contains nearly 600 pages. When they vote in two months will each of the 20 Council members have read your budget, or better yet, understood the larger context in which you present such a “spending plan”?
For instance the Grand List of property in the City of Bridgeport, from which privately owned property is valued by appraisal, and then assessed at 70% of valuation, was recently published, but you have not referred to outcomes of Economic Development initiatives of the past eight years which have had time to increase and bear fruit at least at a rate equivalent to “baked in” employee and benefit plan expenses. Why no comments about flat results? Where are you adding public servants, and where are you paring them back for failure to get necessary results?
What is the value of all City owned property, which is not taxable as you understand? Where is a steady effort to keep the non-producing property more limited? City property, absent a plan, has an expense to taxpayers, but no way of supporting its costs. How much acreage in the City? What is the reason for growth in this category? And where is such a trend measured and protrayed publicly when the expenses of government are discussed?
Mayor Ganim, you remind us that “it is imperative to keep the community informed of hard work”. But taxpayers and voters are also interested in actual results annually and how they compare over at time period as a trend. Where do these outcomes get posted to the City website? On a timeline that informs the public where progress happens, or not, to see a trend? And what motivates stronger educational funding, whether by the City or the State for City youth who are already identified as ‘needy’ by results and assignment as an Alliance District? Why is there no concerted “leadership” for youth who cannot advocate for themselves? Where are the caring adults, concerned with youth development, in City administration and elected leadership? Time will tell.