Editorial

Taxpayers have an opportunity to make their voices be heard concerning Mayor Nancy Rossi’s budget for Fiscal Year 2019, to begin on July 1. The mayor issued her first budget last week before the City Council and, as expected, it is best described as an “austerity” package.

The City Council set next Tuesday evening as the date of the public hearing in Bailey Middle School’s auditorium at 6:30. We are sure there are going to be many lamentations and calls for renewed spending. The problem is the budget has already been given its “imprimatur” by the Municipal Accountability Review Board (MARB) the state-mandated panel that has virtual control over any and all city spending.

Realistically, the City Council, which can only change line-items by a supermajority of nine votes on the 13-member panel, will only be able to shift money around within the bottom line as enumerated by Mayor Rossi. There is little chance the council will pass – or the MARB accept – additions in expenditures.

To review, Mayor Rossi’s outlined a budget of $162.86 million that is only fractionally more than last year’s recommended budget of $162.77 million. In order to keep the expenses down, the mayor had to do exactly what she said she would do, and she was preparing the public to expect: cut and painfully so.

Here are some of the bullet points;

~~ Schools will get an increase of $396,265 in a total of $90.02;

~~ City expenditures have been cut $311.042 in a total of $72.83;

~~ Twelve positions have been cut;

~~ The cuts may mean closure of the Adult Day Center;

~~ The mill rate will stay at $35.26 million while the mill rate for motor vehicles will go to 37 (the mill rate does not reflect fire district taxes);

~~ $9 million has been approved by MARB to pay off the remaining deficit after it was restructured by bonding in late 2017.

The budget as outlined by the mayor is – to use a common expression – bare bones. It is difficult to imagine how the cuts will affect city services, but we are sure those services will be affected in some way.

The problems in West Haven’s financial house are not hard to see. The exodus of industry from the Northeast in general in the 1980s mortally wounded the city’s tax base and it has never recovered despite many administration’s attempts to fill in the vacuum.

In the late 1980s the city was a place to move into by middle class families. It boasted low taxes, but its financial base was still eroding. Finally, the housing bubble burst, and properties were being sold at cents on the dollar. It was a situation from which the city never recovered as well with absentee ownership becoming a problem and less educated, poor tenants taking the place of the middle class. The result is residents taking out more in services than delivering in taxes and levies.

Add to it a 1991 budget deficit that was built into the plan and was not handled by the City Council because of political posturing, and we had the first intervention by the state that lasted until 1994. Add to it overly hopeful tax collection rates in order to balance out revenues with expenses and you have a recipe that puts us in the position we find ourselves today.

The city has floundered since with administrations attempting to find the elusive Holy Grail of “economic renewal.” Many plans have been proposed, but the recovery has been flat. The current hope is The Haven, a high-end shopping mall, will spur a growth in the city’s Grand List.

Mayor Rossi finds herself as the person who can no longer kick the can down the road, and can no longer ignore the financial realities. The city will have to endure the pain of this and similar budgets in the coming years if we expect to have even a possibility of attaining economic solvency.

The pain was a long time in coming, and it will be a long time in gaining relief.