Hamden Alliance for Responsible Taxation - News

Introducing "Becky Budget"

2008-04-20T23:02:00Z

On April 9th, Kelly McCarthy and I introduced the Legislative Council and the audience attending the Council’s Board of Education budget hearing to “Becky Budget,” a child-sized bar graph showing the percentages we spend on various aspects of the Hamden public school system. Unfortunately, some people didn’t quite understand how to interpret her, so we put together a little letter and packet going into further detail as to what Becky means and what she can teach us. You can read the letter and download the packet on the next page.

On April 9th, Kelly McCarthy and I introduced the Legislative Council and the audience attending the Council’s Board of Education budget hearing to “Becky Budget,” a child-sized bar graph showing the percentages we spend on various aspects of the Hamden public school system. Unfortunately, some people didn’t quite understand how to interpret her, so we put together a little letter and packet going into further detail as to what Becky means and what she can teach us. The letter is below and you can download the packet here.

Dear Board of Education Members:

At last Wednesday’s budget hearing, we introduced “Becky Budget,” a breakdown of what our Town spends on Hamden’s Public Schools. We have included Becky as part of this package, should you have use for her when considering the budget.

Becky was born out of our own desire to understand the education budget and then help everyone better visualize where the money goes, in aggregate, so that we can work together to identify areas of inefficiency and make solid recommendations for ways to direct a greater percentage of every dollar towards our students. Our ultimate goal is to see the quality of Hamden’s educational system maintained, possibly even improved, by increasing our efficiency and proactively addressing the challenge of economic sustainability.

If we hope to maintain the quality of Hamden’s schools, the Board and Town need to seriously address the expenditures represented by little Becky, consider the economic climate, plan for future reductions in State funding, and examine the Town’s overall financial plan. We truly appreciate the efforts you have made to reduce costs and increase efficiency thus far and we are encouraged by what we have seen from Hamden’s new Superintendent.

There is some perception that HART members are insensitive to the plight of our schools, but the reality is that our membership includes retired teachers, current educators, people married to teachers, those who have children in Hamden’s schools currently (or have in recent years), and even some who would like to be able to put their future children into Hamden’s schools. Being sensitive to the plight of our schools, however, does not keep us from recognizing that we cannot afford to make the assumption that Hamden will be able to maintain the status quo and sustain these percentages in the coming years.

One example that was highlighted by some HART members was the proposed Mandarin Chinese program. Let us first state that, for the record, HART has no objections to our schools teaching Mandarin Chinese. We understand that we are being provided with a financial incentive to add this program to the curriculum, but we are concerned about how this new program is going to affect the bottom line in future budget years, given how strained the budget is currently. If the incentive for the program is reduced annually (or dropped altogether), it leaves the Board (and the Town) in the awkward position of having to either: a) increase the budget to make up for the vanishing incentive; b) drop the program altogether because we cannot afford it; or c) reduce spending in another area to cover the costs. The first option isn’t particularly fair to the taxpayers of the Town and the second option certainly isn’t fair to the students who enrolled in the first year of Mandarin Chinese. The third option, however, holds possibilities if the Board can save the required funds by increasing efficiency and reducing waste.

The last thing any of us want is for the quality of education to suffer and we feel that it doesn’t have to. To address this issue head-on, we would like to see the Board of Education:

work diligently to address our utility spending, particularly the 3% spent on electricity, but also the 5% we spend on transportation (not counting extracurricular- or special education-related transportation), a good portion of which is no doubt spent on fuel;

reduce our spending on special education by examining what programs could be brought in-house instead of having to send our children outside of the Hamden School System, reducing both tuition and transportation fees;

work with the Town to increase the amount of recycling performed at each school facility in the hopes of: a) reducing the amount the Town pays in tipping fees for the waste and b) increasing the revenue collected by the Town when it sells these materials for recycling (perhaps the increase in revenue from recycling could even be split with the Board and credited to your budget to fund other programs);

begin talking with neighboring towns about the possibility of regionalizing certain budget items (e.g. back office functions such as payroll, financing, purchasing agreements, etc.) and/or costly subsections of the education program (e.g. special education, vocational training, etc.) in the interest of increasing both efficiency and educational quality.

The final of these recommendations obviously requires a long-term effort, but we cannot afford to wait until the eleventh hour to investigate this option. Change is sometimes necessary and it need not imply that the current system has failed. If these measures could consistently save us just a small percent of our overall education budget, that is literally hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions) that could be reinvested to improve the quality of our students’ education.

Sincerely yours,

Aaron Gustafson & Kelly McCarthy on behalf of Hamden Alliance for Responsible Taxation

Our suggestions to the Council on this year's budget

2008-04-01T22:21:00Z

Many of our members showed up at the Legislative Council meeting on March 24th to offer constructive criticism of the Mayor’s proposed budget. We’ve collected those comments here for you and for the Council as well.

Town Fleet

As we all know, gasoline and diesel prices are skyrocketing and we need to meet this challenge head-on. As such, we would like to see the town

downsize the vehicles in the ﬂeet, matching the duty requirements of the staff to the smallest possible vehicle for the task;
purchase fuel efﬁcient vehicles or ultra fuel-efﬁcient hybrids as vehicles are replaced and set a minimum fuel-efﬁciency rating for any vehicle purchase;
consider investing in fully electric vehicles for staff travel on surface streets and for short distances; and
require staff to carpool when using town vehicles or making trips for which we are paying mileage reimbursements.

Also, we’re aware of at least one instance in which a town employee was discovered to be siphoning gasoline from his/her town vehicle when it was parked overnight as his/her home. We recommend that all Town vehicles be parked on Town property overnight and on weekends to discourage this practice and to ensure the safety of the vehicle.

Quinnipiac

In addition to the PILOT funds it receives, New Haven has done a good job of making direct arrangements with Yale University to mitigate the ﬁnancial burden a growing private school can place on municipal resources.

Hamden is home to Quinnipiac, another expanding private university, but it seems that we have an increasingly ﬁscally unbalanced relationship with Quinnipiac as they acquire more properties, which reduces our property tax income, and increase their student population, which places additional stress on our resources.
One such aspect is policing: Unlike other private schools, Quinnipiac utilizes our Town’s police force on its campus rather than its own. If the university has no imminent plans to establish its own campus police, we would like to suggest that the Town work with Quinnipiac to establish a fair annual rate for the use of our police ofﬁcers on their campus. This will ensure that the students continue to have the same level of service but will also provide the Town and taxpayers with an equitable solution.

Energy Use – On-site generation

We would like to see the town install or contract solar arrays to generate electricity on-site at as many of our Town buildings as possible. The beneﬁts of this are many-fold:

The Town either produces a portion of its own energy or is paying a far lower rate per kilowatt hour than the currently negotiated rate with UI (as even in the case of contracted solar, we are not having to pay electricity delivery fees), saving money.
The State has revisited its regulations and made it possible to offset the energy consumed from the grid with excess energy produced and given to the grid, making on-site generation extremely attractive on seasonal buildings (i.e. schools). This not only saves the Town money, but could be an additional form of revenue for the Town.
Green energy credits (“recs”) made from producing our own energy can be sold on the open market, making the Town money.

There are also numerous opportunities to use solar-thermal as well, as it can be used to pre-heat water tanks for the ice rink to 180 degrees. The same technology could be used in the schools and other municipal buildings for showers, kitchens and sinks.

Energy Use – Efﬁciency

As we all know, energy is getting more expensive and we, as a town, can’t afford to waste it. As such, we would like to see the town

pursue a performance contract (the last one proposed, though not accepted, would have actually made us money); or
in lieu of a performance contract, conduct energy audits on every Town building, including those under the control of the BoE and gather recommendations for reducing energy use across the board;
create and enforce a no tolerance policy for employees of the Town or BoE plugging in electronic devices not required to do their job;
invest in low power-consumption PCs (such as those by Zonbu) as computers are replaced (such as those using solid state hard drives); and
invest in and use software to control turning on and off all computers and hardware on the network.

Idling

The Town’s ﬂeet consists of more than 100 vehicles (not including school buses operating throughout Town) and we spent approximately $410,000 on gasoline & diesel fuel last year. A government study published in 2006 estimated that from 2 to 30% of a vehicle’s fuel usage can be attributed to unnecessary idling. Obviously, many factors affect how much fuel is consumed while a vehicle idles, but regardless, any amount of unnecessary idling is illegal, wastes money, and contributes to air pollution.

State law prohibits any non-emergency vehicle from idling for more than 3 minutes, unless the outside temperature is below 20F (includes diesel vehicles, cars, commercial trucks
Residents regularly witness Town vehicles idling anywhere from several minutes to hours while their occupants read, complete paperwork, talk on their mobile phones, or simply go about tasks completely outside of their vehicles.
Based on our total projected fuel usage for 2007/2008, if all Town vehicles followed the State’s Anti-Idling regulations, the Town could save from $8,000 to $120,000! (Savings does not take into account any savings we might also realize if our contracted school buses stopped idling while waiting outside of our schools.)
Reducing idling also saves money by reducing wear and tear on engine parts because an idling engine is not operating at its optimal temperature. Letting a vehicle idle for more than 10 seconds wastes more fuel than shutting it off and restarting it.
Thousands of dollars in savings can be realized without any budget items being cut by simply enforcing the existing State law both internally within Town departments and through policing.

Litter & Blight

I want to take this opportunity to speak in support of the new Litter Enforcement Agent position. The position has been needed for many years and provides a valuable service to the community. By addressing citizen complaints, and providing on-site education on recycling, solid waste disposal, bulk trash handling, electronics recycling and hazwaste handling this will help the town reduce litter and blight and increase recycling efforts.

I share the concern expressed by others that revenue is overstated in the Mayor’s budget. But I note that although the Litter Enforcement Agent is carried as an expenditure in the Legislative Council budget, page 94, there is no corresponding revenue projected from his activities. Is this an oversight, or do we need additional Council action to establish penalties, lien rights, etc.?

Also related to revenue, I would like to draw your attention to the “anti-blight” ﬁnes revenue in the Planning & Zoning budget, page 132. Planning & Zoning claimed that they collected exactly $10,000 in anti-blight ﬁnes this year, yet they only project revenues of $2,500 for next year, but the Mayor says they will collect $10,000. Clearly, the numbers do not add up. WIth increased enforcement staff, now is an ideal time for the town to take steps to impose higher blight ﬁnes and implement stricter compliance and collection procedures to maximize the ability of our Zoning & Litter enforcement ofﬁcers to reduce litter and blight in our community. Perhaps the Council should consider adding community service to the penalty for littering.

I urge the council to closely examine and maximize this potential source of revenue. Reducing litter and blight can help us save tax dollars, bring in badly needed revenue, improve the morale of our residents and make Hamden a more desirable place for families and businesses to move to.

Increase Recycling

I am very concerned that revenue has been overstated in the proposed budget. As a result it is crucial that we reduce costs. One way is to cut the cost of garbage disposal to the town by increasing recycling. We should set recycling goals for our schools and private residences. I also believe we need an enforceable ordinance, which requires businesses to recycle as well.

We are currently paying $59 per ton to dispose of waste that is not recycled. On 7/1/08 it goes up to $60 per ton. This rate will continue to rise a dollar per year until 2010 when the current contract ends. Hamden has had one of the lowest rates in the State for a very long time. It is reasonable to expect that our yearly rate will be even higher when the new contract is negotiated in 2010. Last year the town paid over 2 million dollars, to dispose of approximately 36,000 tons of waste that was not recycled.
The State of Connecticut’s Solid Waste Management Plan has set a goal of a 58% recycling rate by the year 2024. We are currently at 25-30%. Increasing recycling in the schools can help us meet this goal and reduce our waste expense as well as educate our children on the importance of the wise use of all of our resources. Every school has a BOE rep who can assist them with this goal. This could become a creative interdisciplinary endeavor involving science, math, art and English classes. This is a controllable expense that we can all work to reduce!
I am asking the council to require the BOE to make a commitment to develop a plan with collection goals for the schools and require the public works Director, working with the Recycling Coordinator and any other necessary personnel, to develop a plan to increase and enforce compliance at private residences. This is an area where funding even more hours for enforcement personnel would pay dividends in waste expense savings. Although not strictly a budgetary concern, it also would be in the public interest to begin the process of preparing an ordinance to require recycling at our commercial properties, and at the least, at businesses—such as coffee shops and some restaurants—which use recyclable packaging in abundance.

State Education Funding

Since the education budget is over 50% of the town budget I think it is crucial that we develop a more aggressive and effective advocacy program for Hamden to receive its fair share of ECS state funding.

I don’t know exactly how this is best accomplished, but it strikes me that our State legislative delegation could be doing a better job on this. Do they have a conﬂict of interest because they represent wealthier communities like Cheshire and Woodbridge? Could this Council and the Mayor be putting more pressure on them? It also seems to me that litigation might be the only way for Hamden to get treated fairly. Are we participating in the lawsuit that several towns have initiated against the State? If not, why not?

I obviously don’t have all the answers, but I would appreciate it if you would tell us what the plan or strategy is to address this issue? What are the short term and long term goals?

Transfer Station

I would like to ask the Council to take a look at the number of employees assigned to the transfer station and determine if it is necessary to have that many employees for the limited operations there. Most of the times I’ve been there, I observe three employees apparently just sitting around, waiting for someone to come in. Occasionally, one will want to see my license and will then follow me around like I’m a criminal for using the transfer station, but there is really no consistency even with that.

I would like to suggest that the Council consider decreasing the operating hours and/or reducing the stafﬁng at the Transfer Station.

Animal Control

The Mayor’s recommendation of a pay raise for Animal Control Ofﬁcer Chris Smith is perhaps the single-most offensive aspect of the Proposed Budget.

Mr. Smith was hired a year ago with no experience in animal control; and there is absolutely nothing in his record that would merit one of the handful of pay raises proposed in the Mayor’s Budget.
To the contrary, in light of his role in the recent “dog-dumping” scandal, Mr. Smith should consider himself lucky that he is even still drawing a Town paycheck. At a minimum, he should have been suspended without pay pending an independent investigation of that incident.

Therefore, I urge you not to approve the Animal Control Ofﬁcer’s proposed 3% salary increase. In the unlikely event that you do think it is warranted, I would suggest that you make the increase contingent on Smithʼs name being cleared of any wrongdoing in the ongoing investigation.

Police Revenue

I’d like to draw your attention to a potential source of increased revenue from our Police force.

Let me begin by saying that I understand that our force is understaffed, and I am very thankful for the services and protection they provide us on a daily basis.

But we have many issues with vehicles breaking a myriad of laws on a regular basis. It is certainly a Town-wide problem, but it is particularly common and noticeable in the more densely populated areas of Southern Hamden.
If you refer to page 146 of the Mayorʼs Proposed Budget, you will see a revenue line for ﬁnes for parking tags. Does this include revenue generated from the enforcement of any other type of non-moving violation, such as illegal parking or idling?
Unfortunately, I was not able to make an inquiry with the department about the breakdown of revenue before tonight, but it seems that either all non-moving violations are lumped into this one revenue line, or the revenue has been negligible in previous years.
I would like to suggest that the Mayor, the Council and the Police department work together to make increased ticketing for non-moving violations a priority. Unlike ﬁnes for moving violations, the revenue generated from non-moving violations remains in Hamden, and the opportunities are seemingly endless. The Council should also consider increasing the dollar amount of these ﬁnes.
I’m sure all of us can recall a time when we saw someone illegally parked on a sidewalk or blocking a ﬁre hydrant. It seems probable that while our ofﬁcers are on their regular patrols that they will encounter the same things. If they take ﬁve minutes to write an additional ticket between calls every month, they have the potential to generate thousands of dollars in revenue and improve the quality of the Town they serve.

Mileage Reimbursement

I am a member of HART and I would like to make an observation and comment about the Town’s mileage reimbursement policies and expenditures.

At page 59 of the Proposed Budget, the Mayor proposes an aggregate mileage reimbursement ﬁgure of $12,000 – which is signiﬁcantly lower than that requested by the Finance Department ($17,750) or last year’s budgeted amount ($18,900). Hopefully, the Mayor’s reduction of this ﬁgure, which covers multiple employees, is an acknowledgement that he will no longer be seeking to be reimbursed for personal mileage, or even mileage driving to and from work.

In light of the controversy over the Mayorʼs mileage, I encourage the Council to do more this budget season than simply approve an annual mileage expenditure ﬁgure. We need the Council to pass a Resolution that re-states the obvious: that mileage reimbursement is available for qualiﬁed employees ONLY for town business-related trips, not including commuting to and from work.

It is disappointing that such a Resolution is even necessary; but because the Mayor has justiﬁed his personal mileage claims by citing the alleged statements of one or more Councilpeople –- and the Finance Director has reimbursed him without question -– it is now necessary for the Council to set the record straight. No single Councilperson or group of Councilpeople ever has the authority to establish town policy in the absence of a formal vote. And there has been none authorizing the Mayor or others to be reimbursed for personal mileage. The Mayor and Mr. Betz know better, but they are apparently intent on defying you and the citizens until you act.

Community Services

As much as I would love to see expenditures reduced where possible, I need to point out an important area where the Mayor’s cuts appear to have gone too far.

At page 27, the Community Services Budget has a line item for “eviction costs” – which, according to the Proposed Budget, are required by state statute for “moving fees, monthly storage fees, auctions, and legal advertisements associated with individuals who have been evicted.” Last year $27,000 was budgeted; already $25,916 has been spent with a total ﬁscal year estimate of $34,000. Given the worsening economy one would expect at least as much expenditure in the coming year. However, the department budgets slightly less ($33,500). The Mayor takes it a step further though, and proposes only $30,000.

Given that this is not a discretionary expenditure, and given the troubled economic times in which we live, it seems foolish to look for savings in the “evictions costs” account. A similar pattern of budgeting is present for the line item for “general assistance services”. These expenses are for “temporary housing and utility assistance”. While the town may have some discretion in these expenditures, it would be cruel to cut back on these services at the very time they are most needed.

Overstated Revenues

Here are some of the more egregious examples:

In the Town Clerk’s budget, at page 203, the Mayor says that the Clerk will collect $1.25 million in real estate conveyance taxes, even though she has only collected $844,551 so far this year and only projects $1.0 million for next year. In this severely depressed real estate market, it seems that the Mayor’s prediction of 25% growth in conveyance taxes is completely unrealistic.
In the Assessor’s Budget, at page 12, the Mayor is projecting $450,000 from a “personal property audit”, despite the fact that the current year’s effort has only produced $112,000 to-date, and the Assessor has provided no prediction for the coming ﬁscal year.
Also in the Assessor’s Budget, the Mayor is projecting $400,000 from the “motor vehicle audit”, despite the fact that this enforcement initiative—which was to have netted over $1.0 million in the current year—has brought in $0 to-date, and the Assessor apparently declines to offer any projection for the coming ﬁscal year.
In the Building Department Budget, at page 22, the Mayor is projecting $2.7 million from building permits, despite the fact that in the current year only $626,000 in permit fees have been collected to-date, and the department’s own projection for next year is only $1.0 million. Given the signiﬁcant slowdown in construction in the economy as a whole, it is difﬁcult to understand the Mayor’s thinking on this item.

Pension Fund

The Pension Fund contribution is critical to the success of this year’s budget process. It occupies one of the few budget lines large enough, in and of itself, to enable meaningful tax relief. In the limited time we have tonight, I want to attempt, in summary fashion, to set out some little-known, or commonly misunderstood, facts about the Pension Fund and the town’s pension obligations, and then—very quickly—offer a suggestion as to an appropriate level of funding for ‘08-09.

Because the Pension Fund contribution is so critical, this is not the last youʼll hear from us on this topic. But as you head into interviews and deliberations, we wanted you to be sensitized to the issues at play.

First to the facts:

Hamden is not required even to have a Pension Fund. In contrast to laws applying to private sector pension plans, there is no aspect of State or Federal law that requires a Connecticut municipality to build up a fund to provide a source or security for its payment of retirement beneﬁts. Nor is there any provision of any of the Town’s collective bargaining agreements that requires the Town to establish a Pension Fund.
If we choose to have a Pension Fund, we are still not required to fund it in any particular amount. None of our collective bargaining agreements require that we fund our pension plan in any speciﬁc amount. Indeed, the Notes to the Hamden Retirement Plan’s Financial Statements conﬁrm that the Town makes contributions to the Fund “at the discretion of the [Legislative Council].”
Although we employ actuaries to analyze the strength of our Fund in relationship to our pension beneﬁt obligations, their recommendations as to funding are simply suggestions based upon their assumptions. In other words, there’s nothing compulsory about what our actuaries tell us. They’re not mediators, arbitrators, judges or legislators. They simply make suggestions based on assumptions that we (in theory) provide. So if and when they give you their suggestions for Fiscal Year 08-09, they should also state their assumptions. And if they don’t, you should ask them!
Our actuaries appear to be applying unrealistic and outdated assumptions when developing funding recommendations for Hamden.

Let me highlight just two of the most critical:

First: they assume that they should apply the same standards to our municipal Fund as are applied to a private sector fund.

There is a common misconception that a municipality’s pension obligations must be secured and funded in the same way as those of a private company. And because the actuaries routinely apply private sector fund modeling to municipalities such as Hamden, we receive insufﬁcient recommendations.

Because a private company can go out of business and cease to exist at any moment, when such a company maintains a deﬁned-beneﬁt pension plan, it is logical for it to aggressively build up a fund of sufﬁcient size so that, at any moment, it can pay all beneﬁts contractually due over the life expectancy of the current and retired employees. If that private employer shuts down before its pension fund is fully endowed from an actuarial standpoint, vested pension beneﬁciaries could be left high and dry.

By contrast, a municipality, such as the Town of Hamden, will never go out of business. The Town can and will honor its pension beneﬁt responsibilities each year because it has the power to tax.

Therefore, there is no need for a fund to be built up to protect public employees’ vested retirement beneﬁts, as there would be for private sector workers. Our Hamden employees can, and should, rest assured that their beneﬁts will be paid because Hamden will always be “in business” with the power to tax!

I believe that our actuaries’ contribution recommendations are based on a private employer model that seeks to provide our employees with more assurance than they could reasonably need or expect. One of the best perks of town employment is the security of knowing that your employer can always create its own solvency!

Second: Our actuaries assume that our current Pension Fund needs to have an indeﬁnite life.

The absurdity of continuing to build up the Pension Fund becomes even more graphic when you consider that Hamden has now, ofﬁcially, closed the door on its deﬁned-beneﬁt pension plan. All new hires are now enrolled in the MERS deﬁned-contribution plan managed by the State. As the Mayor has accurately stated, “This assures that, over time, Hamden’s unsustainable pension plan will simply go away.”

So now for the ﬁrst time in the history of our pension plan we can calculate, actuarially, when Hamden will pay it last retirement beneﬁt, and how those payments will change over time. Should the “closing” of our pension plan change the actuaries’ recommendations, even under a private sector model? Logically, they should.

This is an important question to ask since the Mayor’s proposed contribution is based on a theory of “catching” the actuaries’ recommendation. Yet that recommendation that we are trying to “catch” almost certainly predates the “closing” of our pension plan.

The Mayor is not stupid. So I’d venture to guess—both from his abandonment of pension bonding and the deceleration of contribution growth—that he has “seen the light” on this issue, but feels unable, politically, to pull back any further since differences in pension fund philosophy was a deﬁning campaign issue in 2005.

I hope you have an opportunity to talk with our actuaries about these and other assumptions. I’m sure you’d ﬁnd it enlightening.

So here’s our recommendation: We should contribute no more than $6.0 million to the Pension Fund in Fiscal Year 2008-2009. This is roughly the ﬁgure necessary to “freeze” the Fund at its current level.

By budgeting only what is needed in a given year to meet our current beneﬁt responsibilities, we can create a system that is both rational and fair. By contributing $6 million to the Fund this year, rather than the $13.5 million proposed by the Mayor, we can save taxpayers at least $7.5 million… or nearly 2 full mils! That should be sufﬁcient to avoid a tax increase in the coming year, or even give taxpayers a timely break, and make all of you (or at least all who support it) local heroes.

One ﬁnal “procedural” note: In developing HART’s position on the Pension Fund over the last year or so, I attempted to speak with Hamden’s actuaries about these concepts. They were quite willing to do so, but informed me that Mr. Betz had instructed them not to speak with me about the Pension Fund. As a result, I was compelled to retain another actuary for review purposes; and that actuary would only speak with me “off the record” for fear of being perceived as interfering in a professional peer’s client relationship.

As you know, in my letter of February 27 to President Gorman concerning Budget procedures, we requested an opportunity for the public to interview department heads and others at the time they are questioned by you. President Gorman informed me that he could not grant that request – reasoning that the public has full access to department heads outside the budget process, and that public inquiry would burden the already time-constrained budget process. I understand his concerns, and respect his decision. However, in a case like this, where the administration, afﬁrmatively prevents citizens from speaking with personnel on whose recommendation budget proposals are based, I must object.

Miscellaneous Items

In the Economic Development budget, at page 36, it appears that Mr. Kroop is getting a 60% pay increase (from roughly $50,000 to $80,000). We are not necessarily saying that Mr. Kroop should not receive a raise, but certainly not one of that magnitude. However, it does look like something is going on here that is not apparent on the face of the Proposed Budget. Likewise, at page 35, the line item for the “grant writer” (presumably Mr. Marchand) appears to be going from $34,440 to $49,500 as proposed by the Mayor. Again, an enormous “raise”, but something else is certainly going on here. Were these employees previously paid from federal block grant funds, and that source has dried up?
In the Election/Registrar budget entire categories of expenses seem to have been eliminated by the mayor. See page 47. Have these important expenditures been transferred to another department?
In the Finance Department budget, at page 60, the Mayor has cut insurance expense by over 15%. Is this justiﬁable? It would be great if it was, but I have my doubts.
In the Personnel Department budget, at page 130, a new position of Asst. Personnel Director is requested. The Mayor funds this at $30,000, which is half the requested full-time salary. Does this mean he is endorsing only a part-time position, or does it contemplate that other funds are coming from elsewhere, such as the Retirement Board? In any event, this position, full or part-time, seems unnecessary since the Department has been functioning ﬁne without an Asst. Director for quite some time now.

You can influence the Town Budget

2008-03-23T17:05:00Z

In a major change of procedure, the Town Council is beginning the dialogue over the Town Budget even before they begin deliberating. They’re reaching out to citizens in two ways:

through a questionnaire on budget priorities, etc. and
by hosting a meeting to solicit public comment on the budget at the start of the budget season (as opposed to at the tail end of the process).

HART is recommending that its members fill out the questionnaire and attend the meeting. Read on for details…

The Town Council is giving concerned citizens two new opportunities to give input on the Mayor’s proposed Town Budget this year.

The first is a questionnaire asking for what you think should be prioritized, what services should be expanded or reduced, etc. We’ve posted a PDF of the questionnaire here for your convenience. All questionnaires need to include your name and address and are due to the Legislative Council Office by April 2nd.

The second, and more direct, means of influencing the Council will come this Monday (24 March 2008), when the Council will hold a meeting to solicit public comment on the proposed budget before they begin interviews, deliberations, etc. The meeting will start at 7PM in Council Chambers at the Old Town Hall. We’re asking every HART member who is able to attend this meeting. We will be organizing ourselves in the Council Chambers at 6PM. Please attend if you can.

Helou Removed from Building Committee

2008-02-26T19:14:00Z

In an obvious effort to minimize the impact she might have on the police headquarters plan, Mayor Henrici has dismissed Michele Helou from the Hamden Building Committee.

I can’t say I’m surprised, but the audacity of this administration never ceases to amaze me. Case in point: Michele Helou is appointed to Our Town’s Building Committee. It’s no wonder she was invited: Michele has 15 years of architectural experience and is an expert on green buildings.

At her first meeting as part of the Committee, Helou was presented with the plan to turn Memorial Town Hall into the new police headquarters. What she saw made her cringe and she spoke up. That was a critical mistake.

As we know all too well, this administration is not keen on humoring (or even listening to) dissenting opinions. So, when Michele started her petition to stop the project, preserve several historic buildings, and relocate the police headquarters to a more suitable location, Henrici immediately removed her from the Committee.

This is a terrible loss for that Committee and for Our Town.

If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to sign Michele’s petition to stop this project.

Join the Fight: Stop the Police Headquarters from Occupying Old Town Hall

2008-02-24T21:51:00Z

Hamden resident Michele Helou has begun a petition in hopes of derailing the planned move of police headquarters into Memorial Town Hall. With the tax implications and the effect this project could have on Our Town, we urge HART members to join Michele in the fight.

Hamden resident Michele Helou has 15 years of architectural design experience. She does green building and building energy consulting and is a resident elect to Hamden’s Building Committee. She’s also quite upset:

[A]t last week’s Town Building Committee meeting … the architectural team presented its directive [on the new police headquarters] from an apparent closed-door process—an expensive and reckless plan to destroy two lovely historic buildings in Hamden’s town center and compromise the architectural character and public purpose of Memorial Town Hall with an impressively offensive and massive addition … [and] ... a vast 200-space parking garage, partially shielded by a pedestrian-cruel 200-foot-long pile of dirt ….

Helou was most offended because the plan, which attempts to combine the renovation of Memorial Town Hall with the construction of a new police headquarters will serve neither function well:

There are many good solutions for a new and even better, more expeditiously built police station. Combine it with the new fire station planned for the Dadio Farm on Putnam Avenue as a state-of-the-art emergency response center. Move police headquarters into Government Center and town offices into, well, Town Hall. Or build a nice new police headquarters in a place where town center traffic and resulting lower emergency-response times will not be a concern.

Restoring our Town Hall and other historic buildings in town center could be done creatively and affordably with historic restoration grants and volunteer labor in small steps that will not trigger expensive code updates. Town Hall rightfully belongs to the law-abiding people of Hamden (although the unlawful will be quite cozy in over 20 new jail cells planned for the new headquarters).

Instead of just letter writing, Helou has started a campaign to stop the project by creating a petition to stop bad and expensive building in Hamden.

As this is a tax issue (who do you think’s gonna foot the bill?) in addition to being a quality of life issue, I urge you to join Michele in the fight and sign her petitions. After all, as Michele points out, even though “[e]veryone at the table will say the police station is a done deal and that the work of the last three months of planning and design is irreversible. Hogwash! Architects, engineers and planners work on projects all the time that never get built because of finances, feasibility questions, code requirements or public protests.”

Miss the forum? Watch the videos

2007-11-01T19:25:00Z

As you know, we hosted a Candidate Forum on October 30th for several of the Legislative Council seats and the Town Clerk position. We invited all candidates from Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 9 as well as the nine At-Large candidates. The Republicans were well-represented and Independent Paul Jacques showed up, but only a single Democrat challenger felt the need to show up and talk to her potential constituents: Gina Cahill, who coincidentally managed to shake things up within the local Democratic Party by knocking out long-time incumbent John Flanagan in the Primary.

The event was very well attended and drew people from all political affiliations, with Democrats equaling, if not eclipsing, Republicans in number. I think everyone got something out of the event and it is just a shame the Dems decided not to make a better showing.

For those who were unable to attend, I recorded a large portion of the first two sessions of the Forum before my battery went dead. Unfortunately, I had no spare, so I missed Part 3. As a note, I have not taken any time to edit the footage, so the only break comes when one memory card became filled and I had to swap it out for another. I have posted both to the HART channel on Blip.tv and have also embedded both below if you care to watch them here.

Candidates Forum Part 1 Council Districts 2, 3 & 4, Click To Play

Candidates Forum Part 2 At-Large Council and Town Clerk, Click To Play

The Henrici mileage log runaround

2007-10-31T13:09:00Z

The Hamden Daily News has (sadly) closed up shop, but Sharon Bass is still investigating the shenanigans of the Henrici Administration. Her latest investigation involves the mileage logs of Mayor Henrici and Tax Assessor Jim Clynes. As Sharon had reported in the Daily News, Henrici would have to drive 1,200 miles of office-related mileage (which does not include to and from work, mind you) at the Federally-mandated reimbursement rate of $.41 per mile in order to equal the $570 car allowance he attempted to push through Council in the last budget (he also tried to get $270 for Clynes, but failed on both counts).

In the interest of following up to see how much Henrici and Clynes were getting reimbursed on in July and August, Bass sent a Freedom of Information Act request to Town Attorney Sue Gruen in September. Since then, she’s been given the runaround by Gruen and still has not gotten the mileage log for either gentleman or reimbursement amounts they were given for the months in question.

You can read the full story over on Matt Whalen’s forum website.

Mark puts the tax hike in perspective

2007-10-24T16:36:00Z

In a recent guest column submitted to several newspapers, Mark Sanders puts Hamden’s historic tax hike into proper perspective. Here’s a snippet:

Here’s the scoop—not only were the Henrici tax hikes the largest in Hamden history, those tax changes were also the most regressive ever. Nearly all commercial and high-end residential properties got tax cuts at the same time lower and middle-range homes saw enormous increases.

You can read the whole article in our archive.

In a recent guest column submitted to several newspapers, Mark Sanders puts Hamden’s historic tax hike into proper perspective. Here’s a snippet:

Here’s the scoop—not only were the Henrici tax hikes the largest in Hamden history, those tax changes were also the most regressive ever. Nearly all commercial and high-end residential properties got tax cuts at the same time lower and middle-range homes saw enormous increases.

You can read the whole article in our archive.

Candidate Forum Oct 30th

2007-10-20T16:25:00Z

HART has put together a candidate forum that will run from 6-9:30PM on October 30th in Thornton Wilder Hall at the Miller Library. The forum will cover Legislative Council seats in Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9 in addition to the “At Large” Council seats and the Town Clerk position. The event will be moderated by Kenn Venit, Steve Kalb and Paul Knapp.

The format for the event will allow for opening statements by the candidates, followed by questions from the audience. We’ve organized the event into three phases to make it a little more manageable:

Districts 2, 3, and 4 from 6-7PM
At Large & Town Clerk from 7:15-8:15PM
Districts 1, 6, and 9 from 8:30-9:30PM

This is a great opportunity to meet the candidates for your District and “At Large” and will also help inform your decisions, come Election Day (which is right around the corner: November 6th). If you do not know what District you live in, please consult the Town of Hamden website

Our tax dollars (not) at work

2007-05-11T19:41:00Z

While out running some errands this afternoon, I stumbled upon two Public Works employees hiding in the back of the Spring Glen public lot, reading the paper in a town truck.

While out running some errands this afternoon, I stumbled upon two Public Works employees hiding in the back of the Spring Glen public lot, reading the paper in a town truck. It was about 2:45 in the afternoon, so I highly doubt they were on their lunch break (which means they were actually burning hours we’re paying them to work), but, giving them the benefit of the doubt, they were still wasting our money: the truck was idling the whole time.

It was a pretty pleasant, if overcast day today, and, realizing that, the guys had lowered the windows. So why was the truck on? Well, they obviously either (a) don’t know any better and have not been told to turn the trucks off — which I highly doubt as I have spoken with Public Works Director Bruce Driska on several occasions about not idling the trucks as it wastes fuel and increases maintenance costs — or (b) they just don’t care. Either way, it’s pathetic.

Budget hearing demonstrations a success

2007-04-18T21:57:00Z

As most of you know, we spent the last two evenings in front of Old Town Hall, putting on a show and calling for lower taxes. By all accounts, and despite the horrible weather (last night especially), both evenings were a resounding success! We garnered a lot of press coverage including photos and some excellent quotes from our membership.

Highlights of the demonstrations, from my point of view, were

leaving popcorn at the seat of each council person before anyone arrived and having the clerk push them all to the edge of the desk bcause she didn’t know what was in them,
Mike Germano being the only councilperson willing to eat our popcorn (in fact I think he ate two bags the first night),
Carol Noble commenting on how much she loved Carol’s portrait of her (and the clown hat), and
the thoughtful remarks made by HART members to the Council.

I could go on and on about the events themselves, but you can read about them in the papers (or in our archive). Instead, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank a bunch of people who put a lot of work into making these two evenings a success:

Thank you to everyone who showed up and spoke on our behalf at the two hearings.

Thank you to all of the committed HART members who braved the inclement weather to draw more attention to our cause by standing outside Old Town Hall with balloons in one hand, placards in the other, and Henrici masks on their faces.

Thank you to Mark Sanders for bringing his barrel and standing outside in the cold rain with barely a stitch of fabric on his legs.

Thank you to Joe LeGrand, Barbara Schlein, and Mac Sanders for doing such a wonderful job preparing the popcorn for hearing attendees. I’m sure many people were thankful for the sustenance during those two long hearings.

Thank you to Carol Christmas for working so hard on the councilperson heads and Henrici masks.

And last but not least, a big thank you to Kelly McCarthy for coming up with the circus theme. I highly doubt Hamden has ever seen such a theatrical protest. It was a great idea and was beautifully executed.

Congratulations to everyone… you did a great job!

Events listings, photos, and more

2007-04-13T21:15:00Z

In addition to setting up this website, we’ve also established HART in a few other places around the web.

Posting events at Upcoming.org

Our first stop was to create an account on Upcoming.org, which is an public calendar website. This allows up to post our events as well as other events we feel people should know about. The calendar is searchable by town, region and so forth and it allows people quick access to maps and driving directions to the event location as well as the ability to export the event to their personal calendars (in Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, etc.)

Our events page and the calendar in the footer are both driven by our calendar on Upcoming.org. Clicking the name of an event will take you to that event’s page on upcoming, where you can add it to you own calendar, get directions, etc.

Posting photos at Flickr

We are also using the photo-sharing site Flickr to host photos on the web. They offer us free storage of up to 200 photos and also allow us to embed additional information in the photo such as who is in it, where it was taken and when, etc. You can even leave your own comments on our photos or mark them as your favorites. We may be integrating a photo feed into the site in the near future, but in the meantime, you can check out our pics over there.

Mailing list moved to Google Groups

For nearly a year, Kelly McCarthy has been graciously sending out our announcements and updates from her own email account. It wasn’t so bad when we only had a dozen or so subscribers, but the list has become quite large and it no longer makes sense for us to send messages out this way. For that reason (and a few others I will get to in a moment), we have moved the HART announcements list over to Google Groups. If you were already on our mailing list, you should have received an invitation to join the new list. If you can join on this page by filling in this form and hitting “subscribe.”

So what are the benefits of using Google Groups? Well, for one, it allows multiple members of our steering committee to send out messages (should Kelly be out of town or otherwise engaged). It also automatically archives all of our messages, so if you accidentally delete an email (or 5 million), you will still have access to the archive on our Google Groups site.

More to come

Over the coming weeks we will be adding a lot of new features and content to the site, so stay tuned.

Creating an archive

2007-04-05T15:54:00Z

We are in the process of creating archives of everything we can related to HART and, previously, HHTR.

We are in the process of creating archives of everything we can related to HART and, previously, HHTR. We have divided up this archive into a few different sections: press-releases, press coverage, and materials which we have seed with what we had readily available and which we will continue to fill with new and archival material so you can feel as informed as possible about what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will be doing in the future. We sincerely hope you find these materials helpful.

Welcome to HamdenAlliance.org

2007-04-02T16:43:00Z

Welcome to the online home of the Hamden Alliance for Responsible Taxation, or “HART.” Our organization was previously known as the Hamden Homeowners for Tax Relief (“HHTR”). Our membership recently voted to change our name to better reflect our organization’s character and mission.

We are an “alliance” of citizens dedicated to finding creative, affordable, fair and equitable solutions to Hamden’s unfair tax structure. Our leadership and membership are drawn from a broad spectrum of political affiliations – Republicans, Democrats, Greens and unaffiliated/independent voters. We all share an understanding that when it comes to local issues, national political party affiliations mean little or nothing. What matters most is that our Town government is sensitive and responsive to the needs of its most significant stakeholders – its taxpayers.

As our new name suggests, we are not blindly protesting all taxation, as we understand that a “responsible” level of taxation is necessary for a community to thrive. Unfortunately, the property taxes currently levied by the Town of Hamden are far from responsible, and threaten to destroy the very neighborhoods and Town we cherish.

Over the coming weeks, we will be adding additional features and content to this site. We will also be adding updated materials on important Hamden issues, meetings and events on a regular basis, so we hope you will return soon and will frequently look to us over the coming budget season and election cycle.

We hope to educate a larger number of Hamden’s taxpayers to an awareness of the gravity of the situation and the apparent indifference of the Town’s current elected leadership to the plight of ordinary taxpayers. Once you know what we’ve learned, we hope you will feel motivated to join our fight.

The goals of HART’s agenda include:

Renewed Transparency in Budget Processes
Reform of Hamden’s Town Charter
Restraint in Town & Board of Education Spending
Equitable Relief from 2005 Revaluation
Better Leadership & More Accountable Representation

We encourage you become involved with HART in way you can. There are many different tasks at hand, and we need everyone’s participation to reach our goals! Please take a moment to sign up for our emailing list to receive news of future developments and activities.