City tax bills will hit mailboxes any day now. That noise you just heard wasn’t an early July 4th celebration. The mil rate for the budget year starting July 1 is 41.11, representing an increase of roughly $230 more for the average homeowner, according to city bean counters.
Let us know how much your taxes have increased. It is financing $5 million more for city schools as well as pension obligations. The higher assessed areas of the city such as Black Rock, North End and Brooklawn will be digging deeper than $230.
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i will post what my increase is. My husband thinks our increase will be closer to $600. Time will tell! (thanks, JML!)
People’s taxes are going up because they let them go up. The people of Bridgeport decided they would stay home instead of attending budget or council meetings that concerned taxes. The people of Bridgeport sat idly by while the council voted to screw every Bridgeport taxpayer.
There was absolutely no reason to raise taxes this year. There was more than enough money in this year’s budget to cover all the expenses Finch and Sherwood say forced the tax increase. There were 81 ghost positions that were budgeted for that amounted to a little more than $4 Million. Only one budget was cut out of all the city departments and that was the legislative budget that eliminated Tom White’s salary. The budget and appropriation committee of the council is a joke, for the most part they are Finch toadies or just plain dumb. One must remember the council members ALL suffer from terminal dumb ass.
To the people of Bridgeport I say keep voting for these dumb asses or is the case for the majority of residents stay home and don’t vote and this is what you will continue to get, HIGHER TAXES.
The issue of the people staying home and not voting cannot be stressed enough. There is not enough that can be said about it.
Thanks Andy for presenting some of the facts we have learned by following the charade most Council members practice in terms of “fiscal accountability.” They have no formal training in the process and what ‘experience’ a handful have gathered is no match for the intimidating power and position of the administration representatives they face. Almost half of them don’t bother to concern themselves because challenging administration “wisdom” puts somebody’s job and paycheck in jeopardy. That is, their interest in fiscal accountability for the public is in conflict with their personal interest in the status quo.
The info presented to them is regularly untimely. There is no formal method they have adopted as B&A to create a base of routine inquiry, to form a record of what concerns them and then indicate what they will keep monitoring more closely. They do not object to “monthly reports” not provided in a timely fashion. There are few “taxpayer heroes” among those who ask questions and attempt to get answers. They have Legislative Department funds to spend on fiscal expertise, but they do not have any idea how to use it routinely and effectively. They have Charter power to ask for reports that will help them focus on anomalies, problem areas, filling of “ghost positions” and “ghost expenses,” getting supplementary reports ROUTINELY on confusing line items like Police Overtime that has expanded from nine to 81 line items, etc.
The City Council does not formally review our one remaining audit from the taxpayer-funded Comprehensive Annual Financial Review. Think what questions would get raised if that document were put up to a public hearing of as many nights as necessary for questions to be asked by the public AND ANSWERED by the Mayor, AAA and Sherwood Forest. Because that is where the City Council has to go now for their answers, so why not have such a public meeting? Well maybe because the answers will not be pleasant to face? Why allow the public(including the Council members) to learn more about how the citizen has been shut out of the information process for decades?
And October 1, 2013 is five years from October 1, 2008 the date of our current property valuation and assessment information. When will the five-year valuation begin? Will we see Ganim-style deferrals? (Wonder today how he would stand for monthly pension check deferrals, because it was more convenient or advantageous for the executive in power?) If residential values have decreased since 2008 and budgets increase, the math will show the mil rate 12 months from now will show a substantial increase, by itself and probably create a further spread with regional towns and cities.
As Andy said, we need more formal, professional and effective fiscal review, at budget time and throughout the year to change the trends we have observed and reported on. Time will tell.
At the bottom of the tax bill there should be the following reminder:
Only those who voted may complain or express their satisfaction (Godiva 2012 may be the only one). The rest have the right to shut the hell up and pay the increase.
Joel, yet another absurd assumption on your part. At no time did I ever indicate where I live. And I find it difficult to believe anyone anywhere, including myself, would express satisfaction about a tax increase regardless of where they live.
Joel, are you finger-pointing? 🙂
Thanks Andy and J M Lee.
You made my evening, I want to vomit.
Most of these elected and appointed characters were found under some rock(s), I suspect and they stoned us in turn.
And I have to wonder what our auto tax mil rate will read …
Isn’t the auto tax mil rate the same as the property tax? To the best of my knowledge, that’s the way it is everywhere in the state.
Yes, the mil rate is the same. Property Tax is tax on personal properties that residents are required to register within the municipality.
Now that you mentioned that, finally the cities and the state are cracking down on people with vehicles registered in other states. I have family in Massachusetts and they tell me an overwhelming number of “day workers” from CT register their vehicles there to avoid taxes in CT.
Well, it will be interesting to see the number of New York and Rhode Island plates diminish in Brooklawn. To say it pisses me off is putting it mildly.
JML and AF–you both know the majority of registered voters in this city are NOT taxpayers, right? I mean, just sayin’.
hicsmh,
I know you’re ‘just sayin’, but that is an important statement. Gut feeling? Anecdotal evidence? Heard somebody, sometime? This is so important to the City, that good info should be available.
For instance, if you own a residential property and live in it you can register and vote, but if you own a commercial or multi-unit residential property and live out of town, you have no vote. And if you rent or are in public housing and have no business property in the City and no automobile registered in the City, then the Bridgeport property tax burden is meaningless to you. Agreed?
So since I was never asked whether I own or rent at the address, or whether I had a car when I went to vote, where did you develop this fact? Is it through a comparison of registered voters in a section or the entire City with the net grand list? Time will tell.
*** Nothing but”GREMLINS” in my tax bill, no? *** BASTARDS ***