Editorial

As we head into the final weeks of May, taxpayers may be and should be somewhat concerned about what is happening with the city’s financial structure. As of this writing, the City Council has not set a mill rate for the next fiscal year, due to the recent refusal of that same council to come up with a revised budget.

We will not rehearse the reasons for that refusal as they were enumerated in last week’s editorial; we will, however, note that the Municipal Accountability Review Board (MARB) is expected to reject the budget and send it back to City Hall for necessary revisions. It will ask Mayor Nancy Rossi and the City Council to do what it could not do during the charter-mandated review process.

That does not help taxpayers, and, in fact, may be detrimental to them as tax bills normally go out on June 1 or thereabouts. Mortgage holders need lead time in order to adjust payment schedules to reflect the new mill rate. We certainly hope whatever changes made to the budget – and the concurrent mill rate adjustment – will be made in a somewhat timely fashion.

The concern taxpayers have is understandable. Right now, the city is in a limbo of indecision. What is normally a time of transition from one budget year into another with an understanding of where we are going has become a time of indecisiveness and aimless lurching forward.

In another context, the late Winston Churchill called the end of the Battle of Britain the “end of the beginning.” In some ways, that is what we expect the next few weeks and months to be as it regards the city’s financial future. We certainly hope it is the end of the beginning, because we know it is not the beginning of the end.

The city’s decline has been a long time in coming, and will be a long time in exiting. It is hard to believe that only three decades ago, West Haven was a destination city for renters and homeowners. The tax base was stable, the school system good, and property values and neighborhoods attractive.

The city seemed to be on an upward spiral as middle class buyers were coming into the area in droves. Then the bubble burst. That “bubble” was the housing market of 1988. Housing prices were rising exponentially in the year or two previously, and many expected a “correction” would take place.

Instead of a correction, the entire market throughout the Northeast collapsed in a matter of days. Similar to the collapse of a decade ago, homeowners saw their property values plummet to one-third or one-quarter of what their mortgages were priced. Both homes and condominiums were quickly sold on pennies on the dollar. The boom that expanded the city’s grand list became a bust that contracted it to dangerous levels.

Decisions were made then that set the stage for what we are experiencing now. For three decades the root causes of our decline were unaddressed or given patchwork remedies. Our tax base further eroded to the point the bulk of our taxpayers come from homeowners rather than an industrial base.

The city’s finances collapsed in 1991, and the state came in to run the city for three years. Following that period, no real structural problems were addressed. Plans were made, but never got beyond the drawing board. While the Haven project may or may not be a reality, one must remember this project – or a project of this sort – was announced 21 years ago. The city has spun its wheels in an attempt to get out of an ever-expanding financial rut.

The pain of what comes in the next few months will result in more For Sale signs and more people leaving the city. Once the decisions delayed for three decades are put in place, stability will bring about a needed gentrification. It’s only the end of the beginning, but the city may be closer to that ever-elusive end.