West Haven Taxpayer Initiative ignored by Council

Accord to this New Haven Register article:

A taxpayer-fueled petition, asking the City Council to lower the tax rate because signers feel financially overburdened by skyrocketing taxes, has failed to attract the council’s attention, let alone be placed to a vote.

Despite taxpayers’ repeated protests and pleas to save them from potential financial ruin, the City Council early Tuesday heeded the advice of Corporation Counsel Peter C. Barrett to avoid even entertaining the petition because he believes it to be a legal misuse of the city charter’s provision for initiative petitions.

Clearly, it wasn't worth staying through the full meeting.

According to the article, there were more than 4300 signatures, including the required 3025 that were verified by City Clerk Deborah Collins. It's unclear how many were affected by the allegation brought on by Charles Marino, who stated that 3 of the 54+ circulators were registered voters out of state.

According to the article:

Barrett’s opinion, citing case law, claims an initiative is meant to bring legislative action as opposed to stopping an action, like the 2006-07 budget, from being implemented. Barrett said taxpayers should have used the charter’s budget referendum provision. The deadline for that passed 30 days after the budget’s May approval.

What was also interesting, is that Barrett said that:

the petition, if enacted, would preclude the city from adhering to its statutory obligation to "sufficiently fund the budget."

From what was stated at the meeting by Robert Symmes, the budget WASN'T sufficiently funded, and that it didn't balance... it will be interesting to see how this one pans out in the end.