Things in West Haven that really would be worthwhile

While we're on the topic of Taxes, and City Services, I figured I'd mention a few things that really DO need doing.

• On Ocean Avenue (where people often dangerously speed), side walks need to be maintained for the whole length. There are sections of the road that do not have sidewalks at all!
• The seawall (from South Street through Baybrook) needs repairs in several places... and the Army Core of Engineers granite rocks that are protecting the sewer line need desparately to be reviewed and repaired as needed.
• Accessways to the water along the seawall need to be clearly marked, and maintained... this includes stairs!
• Street cleaning, litter cleaning, beach cleanup! This is our jewel, and we spend lots on sand... why not maintain what we have better! Why not get volunteers to help?
• Better utilize our beautiful public resources, such as the Grove, and the shoreline. Why isn't there a public dock in West Haven? Wouldn't a 'dock and dine' restaurant make sense?
• Bring back business to West Haven. We need to make West Haven attractive to businesses -- we need to particularly improve along the 95 corridor, and by the proposed Train Station. We should go after more big names. Why didn't WE get Stu Leonards? Please, no more housing there! We don't need houses -- we need businesses. Let's make the train stop a shopping destination!!!
  
• We need to improve the state of aging housing in our town. We should change zoning regulations to require larger property parcels in order to build new construction - we've become nothing but a suburbs... there is no business, no free land.
• Get the Riverfront project underway. We need to revitalize that area, too!
• Publicize what areas of town are zoned as historic areas... there is a lot of history in West Haven that is untold!
  

Power Outages and Fire Department overtime?

While at the Savin Rock Road Race, I talked with another taxpayer regarding the recent Friday July 28 thunderstorm that knocked down trees (including one that fell in front of Mayor Picard's home). In this taxpayer's neighborhood, lines went down, and his electricity went out at about 6 pm, and didn't come back on until 2 am.

During that time, there were West Haven Fire Department staff posted at either end of the road where the lines were down. As several neighbordhoods were impacted, and Fire staff and police staff were out assisting, one wonders how much overtime we paid???

Scaled Down Savin Rock Festival appears to have hurt 12th Annual Savin Rock Road Race

Attendance and number of runners were both down in today's Savin Rock Road Race. According to Chamber of Commerce sources, there were roughly 400 finishers of the race in ALL age groups, a number which was stated to be down from past years.

The JB Sports has a website which lists the winners for just the adult 5K races for past years (2000 - 2005 posted to date).

Results include:

Year	5K Racers	Title Sponsor
2000	392	West Haven Chamber
2001	346	West Haven Chamber
2002	337	West Haven Chamber
2003	328	West Haven Chamber
2004	291	West Haven Chamber
2005	364	Walden Spring
2006	300	Walden Spring

[Edited to add that the tally was 300. That's down somewhat, but the high heat might have kept people away].

Office of the Comptroller - Financial Planning

... why is there is $22,000 increase in the budget allocated to Finanacial Planning? In 2005/2006, $78,000 was allocated, and now there is $100,000 budgetted. Mayor Picard used to work for Amex Financial Planning - is there any connection there?

Costs of Corporate Council

I notice that this year, there's a significant increase in Corporate Counsel costs of 8.5% ($22,880) , as we now have to pay for Paralegal services (where in the past we have not)... this is a significant increase -- is it necessary? This amount alone would have more than paid for the $19,000 we supposedly saved by not having the full 4 day Savin Rock festival.

State Grants for Municipalities

I would expect that the mayor's office has fully investigated opportunities present by the list of grants provided by the state for Municipalities, but I present the link in case something has been missed.

Mayors Budget Message

Mayor Picard's "Mayor's Message" that he distributed with his proposed budget puts forth some interesting points that haven't necessarily been made clear to the public:

• He admittedly puts forth a very conservative estimate of revenues from state and federal grant monies.
• He lowered tax collection expectations from 96% to 95.5% which conflicts with the statements being made about the new tax collection software problems in a news article today. Incidentally, there is a grant that can be had for Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal systems development, hardware, and training ... that might be something worth the town's time to look into.
• West Haven self-insurances health insurance, which is why there is a 22% increase in health insurance budgeted expenditures for education alone. I'm not convinced.
• There was an expected 4.3% increase in expenditures... WHY????
  
• Debt serviced is actually increasing by 10.5%... I thought he was paying down the debt by $19 million this year?

He is predicting that there will be a $9.5 million deficit from last year's budget -- but where's the proof? Where is the documentation of what was over budget?

The conservative estimate of revenues is concerning as well -- is he trying to make it look worse this year, so that next year during his re-election campaign, he can make it look better?

West Haven Tax Tallies don't add up

Amazing - apparently, the City of West Haven pushed in a new tax collection program just prior to the July crush of tax collection. Surprise, surprise, the program doesn't seem to be working.

Anyone who works in Information Technology would know that pushing forth such a change right before tax collection would be a no-no, but Finance Director Nalini Srinivas alleges that the City Council made her do it in order to comply with being able to receive a 96% tax collection rate. What does tax collection have to do with software?

You can read the full New Haven Register article here.

Disappointing Savin Rock 'Festival'

I'm just back from my visit to the shortened Savin Rock Festival - it was an amazing disappointment. We visited the ENTIRE festival (looking at every booth, every ride) in a short 45 minutes.

In the past, there has been a large craft fair - now there were only about 20 bored looking vendors. Mixed in were several 'raffle ticket' penny auctions, and a few hot-looking local businesses. Even the local Rotary club decided to not attend -- the usual Sat/Sun pancake breakfast will be greatly missed, particularly tomorrow, when church lets out, and the road race (which will be on a day without a festival) has been run.

The amusements were from Orange, CT, and were small kiddy rides - the most teen-oriented of the bunch was a small tilt-a-whirl. The Festival ended at 9pm last night, and will end tonight at 9 - no wonder the beaches were packed, and the festival was empty.

The "Laughing Lady' that they had rented wasn't from Savin Rock, and in fact, they had a notice underneath it that 'Are Laughing Lady is missing'... and the that the Mayor's office was looking for leads on it. Needless to say, it's disappointing that the mayor's office misspelled Our, and no one has bothered to fix it.

The food court usually seeks to impress, with Italian sausage and pepper sandwiches, fruit salad, strawberry shortcake, and many ethnic venders. This year, there were a handful of venders (down from what seemed like several dozen in the past). Two sold hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries and fried oreos. There were two fried dough venders, a 'cheese steak' vender, and the exotic offering was pan fried sandwiches. A couple of lemonade vendors were around the small craft fair, and a couple of italian ice vendors. Sad.

Mayor Picard has raised our taxes, and has increased the budget by $5M, and what do we have to show so far for it? We have 4th of July Fireworks in June, and a 2 day extremely cut-down Savin Rock Festival instead of a 4-day celebration of West Haven. Disgusting.

Education Budget - Insurance costs?

Continuing to look through the many pages of West Haven budget information (the total document is something like 125 pages long), I remain inside the section on Education.

Here's something disconcerting - why has the cost of health insurance jumped so signficantly?

From page 98 of the budget:

	2002/2003 Actual	2003/2004 Actual	2004/2005 Actual	2005/2006 Budget	2006/2007 Requested
Health Insurance: Cert	5,250,829	6,479,017	6,992,454	6,530,930	7,706,642
Health Insurance: Non-Cert	2,264,822	2,528,081	2,799,952	2,452,985	3,251,343
Total	7,515,651	9,007,098	9,792,406	8,983,915	10,957,985
% Change	-	+20%	>+ 9%	- 8%	+22%

If we have reduced the number of workers, why the 22% increase in health insurance??

Education Budget - Superintendent's pay?

I've reviewed the Board of Education Budget, and again I have a few questions regarding pay for the Superintendent and Assistant Superintendents (how many ARE there?).

You may recall that I blogged earlier:

Our source for this information is the 11/05/2004 West Haven News article entitled School Board keeps Tortora.

Also in that article, however, it shows that the Board of Education had extended his contract to August 31, 2007 (from August 31, 2006)... and regarding pay:

According to the new contracts, both men will receive the same 3 percent salary increases in their final year that they are now guaranteed in the 2005-06 academic year.

By the end of 2007, Tortora will receive $146,260, up from $142,000, while Cavallaro's salary will get a boost from $122,000 to $125,660.

The only other new terms of the contracts include three additional vacation days, starting this academic year, as well as a $500 stipend each.

And we are aware that Superintendent Paul Tortora made the decision to retire in 2006. However, if the agreement was that Paul Tortora would receive $146,260 by the end of 2007, why was 146,855 spent in the 2005/2006 budget year? And why has $150,000 been budgetted for this year!

Also, more concerning, is that we appear to have multiple assistant superintendents - is that really necessary? Our costs for Assistants has risen significantly. In 2004/2005, we only spent $116,651 on assistant superintendents. In 2005/2006, we spent $169,094 (estimated). However, for 2006/2007, we have budgeted $253,864 (!) WHY????

First looks at the Budget Summary

Well, I've read through the budget summary... and some things just don't add up.

Let's start with expenditures:

• Why are we trying to increase our Contingency account from 1,080,777 to 1,721,645? That's an increase of 59%!!!
• Why has our operating charges increased by 19%?
• Can't we possibly cut our Human Resources expenses more than 2%?
• Why does the library cost $1.446 million to run? Doesn't the library have its own large endowment??? What is this 'Village Improvement Association' that we are paying into?
• How can it possibly be that city insurrance should increase from 53,290 up to $593,801???
• If the number of city employees is cut in about half (by the charts provided), then why are we budgeting about $1 million more for pensions and hospitalizations?
• If the number of employees has really halved, then why hasn't expenditures on their salaries halved?
• Does it really cost $90,000 to run the compost site?
• Why is their an increase in the cost of grounds & Building maintenance, and highway and park maintenance?
  

Then, there is the non-tax revenues. This is income from sources OTHER than current taxes.

• Did we really reduce our non-current taxes to a point where we think we'll collect less than 52% of the amounts we collected in previous years, or did we sell off our old tax collections for pennies on the dollar? If current property tax interest has increased from 275,000 to 400,000, doesn't it stand that we have a large amount to collect?
  
• Why is the column of 'Other Revenues' down by 40%?
• Why did we see a dramatic decrease in the total value of Building permits in 2005?? Did we stop enforcing them? Did we reduce the COST of building permits??? We had quite a few new home construction projects begin in 2005, both on Chase Lane, as well as Morgan Lane, and a few other locations as well...
  
• Why do we expect to see less revenues for animal licenses?
  
• Why is the cost of alcholic beverage licenses so low?
• Why is the value of police license & protection permits reduced from previous years?
• Why do we expect to see less revenue from Parks & Rec??
• Why are tax fines & penalties so low?
• Why are grants for school building & construction 1/3 of what has been allocated previously? For the past 4 years, the lowest figure that we received was > $3,000,000, yet we only have $1,000,000 budgetted!
• Why has the Property Tax relief (manufacturing) amount gone down? Is it because we are losing manufacturing plants?
• Why did we allot nothing for the 'Fed cops grant & Fed misc.'? In the past, we've received roughly $150,000 per year.
• Why are we charging Orange only $77,500 for sewage use, when last year we charged them nearly $500,000???? I think this MUST be a mistake!
• Why have we budgetted less income from vaccines & flu shots?
• Why are we receiving about $5000 less in organic recycleing and compost fees?
• Why do we have so much less income from bonds?
• Why are we barely turning a profit on the Savin Rock Conference Center??
  

Some other potential sources of income, no matter how small:

• Why not charge a small but reasonable fee for the use of public internet access at the library?
• Why not increase fees to rent the large library meeting room, which, at least a couple of years ago, only cost $20 to rent?
• While the bookmobile is really a nice feature, is it possible that the program should find other sources of funding this year?
• Why does the Visiting Nurses Association cost us money?
• Is it possible to increase fees for summer youth programs?
• Why not allow LICENSED venders to operate along the boardwalk (on the side away from the ocean) near the bandstand?
  

Population facts from the U.S. Census Bureau

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, our population has shrunk since 1990:

1990: 54,021
2000: 52,360
2005: 52,923 (estimated)

More detailed information is available on the 2000 census:

7442 people were over 65 years of age - that's 14.2% of the population. I'd expect that the majority of these people are on fixed incomes.

4,474 individuals were below poverty level - that's 8.8% of the population.

94.4% of the 22,336 housing units were occupied, and 55.2% were occupied by their owners. I'd expect that this figure had actually increased prior to the budget woes, as the real estate market was decidedly a seller's market up until a little while ago.

67.9% of the 2000 population were in the labor force. Per capita (i.e. per person) income was only $21,121 in the equivalent of the buying power of a 1999 dollar.

I'm not certain of the difference, but the median household income was only 42,393, and the median family income was 51,631.

... that's not a lot of money, even if you apply a standard cost of living increase, especially when many people's taxes have now increased thousands of dollars.

Mayor Picard alleges that Mill rate cannot be changed

From today's New Haven Register article entitled " W. Haven tax petition may be in error", Mayor Picard states:

Mayor John M. Picard is hard-pressed to comprehend how hundreds of dissatisfied taxpayers who rallied Monday night on the Green expect the city to lower the budget based on an initiative petition they supported, but in any case he believes the petition is a misinterpretation of the city charter.

In the article, Mayor Picard alleges to have attended the rally from start to finish -- which I find rather ludicrous.... if he was there, why didn't he step up to the microphone?

He is quoted in the article as saying:

"I would have loved to have a chance (at the rally) to explain it,"

Well, if he was AT the rally, I'm SURE that it would have been allowed. People are angry - we shouldn't have to incur increases at a level that will make this town a ghost town.

Town counsel Peter Barrett is paraphased in the article as saying (in part):

the initiative provision is designed in part for taxpayers to petition the City Council to approve a new line-item allocation, not an entire budget, which comes under the referendum option.

It's also revealed that West Haven Taypayer Initiative co-leader, Robert Symmes, tryed and failed to get enough signatures within 30 days of the budget was adopted on May 4.

According to the article, another WH Taypayer Initiative co-leader, Brent Coscia, is already talking about starting a further initiative should this one fail -- this time to remove Picard and Barrett.

According to this article, we have $265 million in debt, and will be facing a $11.2 million budgetary shortfall. I've now downloaded the budget, and I definitely will be reviewing it.

City Budget - proposed and actual - online

If you click here, and select 'city budget', you can download the weighty document which is our city budget... I have some serious reading adhead of me.

Property Tax Exemptions

I've been looking at the City of West Haven's website. I did find this information from the Assessor's office on tax exemptions.

West Haven offers tax relief to:

• Elderly homeowners and Totally disabled - up to $1250(married) or $1000 (single) if their income doensn't exceed $22,700 for singles, $33,900 for married in 2005 (had to be filed by May 15, 2006).
  
• Blind and Totally disabled - By CT Law - $3000 if legally blind (must show proof by January 31 of the tax year), $1000 if receiving benefits from Social Security (again must show proof by January 31).
• Veterens - CT law allows $1500, but West Haven provides a $6000 exemption if not disabled, and $9000-18,000 exemption for disabled veterens. (applications between Feb 1 and Oct 1, filed biannually)
  

In all cases, more information can be had from the Tax Assessor's office - call (203) 937-3515.

Property Tax Revenue shifting from Commercial to Residential

Also in the WTNH article, were statements from Economist Ron Van Winkle about the property tax revenue shifting from "commercial enterprises to residential communities".

He then goes on to say:

"It shifts primarily because the value of housing has risen so rapidly, in the last five years, it really has skyrocketed - while the price of commercial property has increased, it certainly hasn't increased at nearly the same rate,"

and

What's more troubling, says Van Winkle, is the fact cheaper homes are seeing bigger tax increases than expensive estates. Why? Because of the higher demand for inexpensive housing.

This leads me to a whole bunch of commentary.

• West Haven has a double whammy, then. Not only has the price of commercial property not increased at the same rate as residential property, but we have not grown our commerical tax basis. I'm going to look for the documentation to back this up, but I think our commercial entities have actually shrunk - Bayer has moved and closed parts of their operations, and even small businesses such as Mario's and Joseph's have moved out of town.
  
  
• Someone needs to tell Vision Appraisal about the fact that cheaper homes are seeing bigger tax increases. This certainly isn't the case in West Haven... inexpensive housing certainly saw lower tax appraisal increases than those homes on the West Shore.
  

Ron then goes on to say:

"In some cases you might see property taxes double in a home in Connecticut. It's going to mean to a lot of home owners may think about not staying, that they can not afford to live in the state of Connecticut," says Van Winkle.

As we know, this is certainly true... and unfortunately, it's a problem with a ripple-down effect. Not only will suddenly people be vacating the state, but then business will leave, due to difficulty of hiring employees for cost effective wages. This will mean that there are less commercial entities to pay property tax.

Property Taxes, Mill Rates, and (re-)Evaluations: A quick primer

There is an interesting article on the WTNH website today about how many communities are now battling rising property taxes.

However, me thinks that their facts are a bit wrong.

The articles states:

Many towns and cities are in the midst of revaluation and in some cases property taxes could be doubled.

and then quotes (perhaps mis-quotes?) Economist Ron Van Winkle as saying:

"It's going to occur in almost every town in the state of Connecticut, re-evaluation. The good news is your house is worth a lot more today than it was five years. Bad news is your taxes are going to go up substantially because of that,"

This is a common mis-conception. Revaluation itself doesn't raise taxes. The value of your home as a percentage of the town's total tax basis is used to determine your share of taxes. Basically, your taxes are determined by the budget, and how much "of the town" you own.

Your taxes equal the percentage of the town that you own, times the budget. So, for a simple example, if your property is appraised at $10, and the total taxable property in town is appraised at $1000, and the budget is $300, you would own 10/1000 (which is 1%) of the town, and your taxes would be $10/$1000 x $300 = $3.

The property tax mill rate SHOULD be set as dividing the budget by the total taxable property of the town. So, in the above example, the mill rate would be $300/$1000 = 0.30

If the town is revaluated, and your property is worth $20, and the total taxable property is worth $2000, you still own the same percentage of the town (20/2000 = 1%). If the budget is the same, the mill rate would be $300/$2000 = 0.15. So, while your property value doubled, the mill rate was halved, and you still would owe the same amount of taxes!!!

Now, there are a couple of reasons that the taxes in West Haven went up, and didn't go up the same amount for all people in West Haven.

1. It was decided that all property values in West Haven did not increase at the same rate. It was decided to raise the property values of the West Shore owners (and particularly those who live nearest Long Island Sound) dramatically (220-260% !), while those who lived inland nearer Orange and New Haven went up dramatically less (some as low as 80%). This dramatically changed the tax burden for West Shore owners, quite a few of whom are retirees!
   
   
2. The Budget increased dramatically, with the majority of the increase being used to pay off debt, while chopping services, such as the West Haven Ecomonic Development Corp., the education budget, the police budget, etc.
   

There are friends of mine on the West Shore who work hard (including working a full time job and operating a full time business). Their taxes have increased over $6000 to $14,000.

I know of SEVERAL people who live in long-time family homes -- homes that they grew up in many years ago, and now have themselves retired in. They are trying to decide what they will have to do... and several believe that if the tax situation doesn't abate that they will have to move...

So, the West Shore Taxpayers tried to appeal the the home revaluations for the West Shore, siting that the tax burden that was falling on their shoulders was overwhelming. The West Haven Taxpayers Initiative is trying for a change to the budget, to have a more reasonable mill rate.

I agree with both.

While I do understand that property values may have increased somewhat faster on the West Shore side of town, real estate agents that I had spoken to last year before the revaluation actually said that there was not enough affordable houses for sale... that there were more buyers than sellers.

I also don't think that we have to pay off all debt in one fell swoop. Some speculation has been around that perhaps Mayor Picard is trying to raise the taxes dramatically this year, so that he can cut them next year, and look like a hero... I hope that isn't true.

Found Elsewhere (7/25/06)

• Property tax increase may force West Haven homeowners to sell
  WTNH, 7/25/06
• Decades-old debts may lead to cuts in W. Haven grants
  New Haven Register, 7/25/06
• Hundreds of W. Haveners rally over taxes
  New Haven Register, 7/25/06
• West Haven residents rally over proposed budget
  WTNH, 7/24/06
• Education underfunded, says state
  WH Voice, 7/22/06
• City property, taxes and debt
  WH Voice, 7/21/06
• Budget rally set Monday
  WH Voice, 7/21/06
• A Little Too Simple
  WH Voice, 7/21/06
• Debt Issues elude many
  WH Voice 6/28/06
• Budget petitions are out
  WH Voice 6/28/06
• Fiscal Woes Need time to heal
  WH Voice 6/11/06

Property tax increase may force West Haven homeowners to sell

WTNH reports that the Property tax increase may force West Haven homeowners to sell. What's particularly sad is how many people who are living on a fixed retirement income will possibly need to sell...

West Shore Taxpayers Appeal

Glenn Tuazon has created a site for the West Shore taxpayers who are (were?) appealing their accessments last Spring - I wonder if they had any luck?

It's pretty amazing... if you look at the Vision Appraisal database for West Haven, and look at Ocean Avenue in West Haven, you'll see that odd addresses (the water side) have SIGNIFICANTLY higher taxes than even side of the road, even when they aren't directly waterfront property!

Superintendent of Schools pension correction

As we mentioned in our first post, we want to get to the truth - not just the rhetoric, and not just the impassioned anger and frustration that we and others as West Haven residents feel. Therefore, I must post a correction.

We had originally said that we had heard that Paul Tortora, as former superintendent of schools (retiring after only 4 years as superintendent), was receiving an 80% pension of his income. We were outraged, because we didn't understand that while Mr. Tortora had only been superintendent for 4 years, that he actually had over 30 years of service with the West Haven school system, and had served the 7 years prior as deputy superintendent.

Our apologies for the misinformation.

Our source for this information is the 11/05/2004 West Haven News article entitled School Board keeps Tortora.

Also in that article, however, it shows that the Board of Education had extended his contract to August 31, 2007 (from August 31, 2006)... and regarding pay:

According to the new contracts, both men will receive the same 3 percent salary increases in their final year that they are now guaranteed in the 2005-06 academic year.

By the end of 2007, Tortora will receive $146,260, up from $142,000, while Cavallaro's salary will get a boost from $122,000 to $125,660.

The only other new terms of the contracts include three additional vacation days, starting this academic year, as well as a $500 stipend each.

An interview with John Picard

In the above linked document, Mayor Picard would seem to indicate that our taxes are too high and that if he was in office, they wouldn't need to be... however, as we well know, taxes are now higher than ever.

When asked where he sees us 5 years from now, he states (in part):

With a change in leadership, I see the debt reduced by 30-40%, a 4-5 Mill reduction in taxes, a place that attracts business and a prosperous downtown.

I don't think any of us believe that we'll ever see a 4-5 Mill reduction in taxes if it has been raised on average 30-40% this year.

He also indicates that he is a 'lifelong resident of West Haven' - if that's so, why isn't he a property owner????

Mayor John Picard and West Haven

From the link above, Mayor John Picard was a member of the West Haven City Council, and even the Chairman. It's entirely unthinkable that he had no idea of the fiscal state of affairs before he came to office - I don't see where he could be surprised at the state of affairs.

His 2005 Campaign platform was:

• PROVIDING ACCESSIBLE AND EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
• RESTORING A RESPONSIBLE AND ACCOUNTABLE GOVERNMENT
• BRINGING REAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TO WEST HAVEN
• COMMITTING MORE POSITIVE RESOURCE TO EDUCATION
• PRESERVING OUR UNDEVELOPED SHOREFRONT

It's concerning to me that he feels that "accessible and effective leadership" includes raising taxes to the point where so many people feel that they have to sell and get out. I don't see that incurring penalties from lack of educational budget is being 'a responsible and accountable government', nor is is committing more positive resource [sic] to education. I haven't seen ANY evidence of bringing real economic development to West Haven. The only statement that so far has been kept to is 'preserving our undeveloped shorefront'.

Hundreds of W. Haveners rally over taxes

This New Haven Register article summarizes it well; explains how people cannot afford the huge tax increases. They quote two people whose taxes have gone up $1000 and $3000 - I know West Shore residents whose taxes went up by $6000... and they are hard working people who are wondering why they are working just to pay for a house.

It talks about residents who live in their childhood home, but who no longer are going to be able to afford to live there.

The article identifies the rally organizers as Robert J. Symmes, Brent Coscia and Paul Kaplowe, who are residents of West Haven, and who head up the "West Haven Taxpayer Initiative".

It identifies the purpose of the petition:

The petition asks the City Council to set the tax rate at no more than 24.50 mills and appropriate at least $79.38 million to the Board of Education and $13.48 million to the Department of Public Safety for fiscal 2006-07

and finally discusses Mayor Picard's position:

Picard said before the rally that he is hard pressed to comprehend how the city would achieve the proposed budget amendments. "A couple of people have come up and asked me to sign the petition and I’ve said I would if they could show me how to do it," he said.

Why not consolidate the Fire districts? Yes, we need multiple fire houses, but do we REALLY need three chiefs?

Why not use the $3 million dollars that Walmart paid for the Sawmill Road property to partially help mitigate the tax burden? I understand that its a one time payment... but why not use PART of it to help this year, save part for next year, and put part towards the debt?

Why not ATTRACT businesses to West Haven -- and actually finish developing the Sawmill Road corridor?

Why not get movement on the Railroad Station? State Money has been allocated towards this -- why not get businesses to invest in the area!

The point is that there IS money that could partially be used to pay off debt, AND partially used to mitigate the costs of the budget... the debt doesn't have to be erased in one fell swoop!

Referendum... when???

According to the WTNH article, West Haven Residents Rally over proposed budget:

The City Clerk tells News Channel 8 that the group has gathered enough signatures for a referendum however she adds that the issue would have to be debated in City Council and a vote would not come about for at least a couple months.

Why is this going to take a couple of months??? That makes entirely no sense... this is an immediate issue. Our tax bills came out on July 1 - are they going to rebate our monies to us should they change the budget??

West Haven Tax Rally

We went to the West Haven, CT tax rally last night; we were astonished to hear that:

• The Mayor of West Haven doesn't own property in West Haven
• The former Superintendent of schools, Paul Tortora, was given a pension worth something to the effect of 80% of his $140,000+ salary after only working as superintendent for 4 years. [NOTE: Further research has revealed that Mr. Tortora has worked for the school system for 30+ years - our apologies to Mr. Tortora, who clearly has earned his dues.]
  
• That because our educational budget has been slashed, that we are going to pay 6-figure penalties to the state of Connecticut (Why not spend this money on our kids - our future - instead of giving this money to the state of Connecticut?

Are these statements rumors or propaganda? Truthfully, we don't know... yet.

If West Haven has financial problems, sure, we have to fix them. But we CANNOT do this in one year. I look up and down the streets, and roughly 20-25% of our town appears to be up for sale now. The taxes are chasing long-time residents and pensioners out of their homes!

What we have heard greatly alarms us -- so we want to learn the truth, and give people a place to discuss this problem. What is truly fact is that West Haven taxes went up 30-40% (and in some cases, much more... our taxes increased by 50%).... and they went up at a rate that most people cannot afford. Let's find out the truth!!