Picard, the only candidate so far to announce a run for mayor, warned that unexpected expenses and the city’s decision to use some of its fund balance, or rainy day fund, to keep from raising taxes created the crisis. He said the city is "in jeopardy of lowering its bond rating to junk status."Whether or not you agree with his handling of the issue, it does appear that he is delivering a consistant message.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Mayor Picard and consistancy
Mayor Picard is consistant with the messages that he presented back in May 2003. According to the New Haven Regsiter article entitled "Mayoral candidate warns of financial crisis":
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2 comments:
The more that I went back, the more I realized that Mayor Picard and former Mayor Borer have NEVER seen eye to eye on much of anything. They both accused each other of much wrongdoing.
It does appear after the Checkers report that part of the problem with the $50-odd million in the General Fund account was that it shouldn't have been there in the first place.
On the other hand, Mayor Picard has definitely taken the tack of reducing the debt service at all costs, including raising taxes, instead of mitigating the pain through smaller increases. He is actually building the reserve in his budget.
my forte - I didn't mean 'he is actually building the reserve' to be a compliment. I have a problem with building an excessive reserve in the current time, although I suppose some reserve is needed for the unplanned.
RE: the educational budget shortfall
I didn't see it definitively stated, but wasn't this refunded to the minimum necesssary standard?
RE: the masonic temple
This is a no brainer - we would have lost the $550,000 grant had we not acted, and the property is very valuable to the city of West Haven. EVEN if they just turned around and resold it, it's worth well more than $100,000.
thetruth - I agree - the tax collection rate is going to be very interesting. I'd like to hear someone elaborate more on the selling of the tax debt, which from reading older Register articles, then city councilman Picard wanted to do way back, and may have done now. In fact, he slammed the Borer administration for not putting the JER tax liens out to bid (citing conflicts of interest), and for not using a Florida company to buy out our tax liens. Companies that buy out tax liens typically do so for pennies on the dollar, though, and I'm concerned that we've lost tax revenue. I understand that when started chasing the taxes, we actually started a pretty good record as far as tax collection (well, if you don't include the Chick's and Jimmie's crew.)
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