WHAT'S NEW?
07/31/08 – 2,507 signatures were verified by
the Town Clerk’s office (2,233 were required) which means that enough
signatures were collected to force a second budget referendum. According
to the Town Charter that budget referendum has to be held on September 30.
07/02/08 – Robert Sisk revised his budget
forecast analysis which includes information from recent budget reductions and it is available here.
06/25/08 – The Board of Education makes
reductions to its budget:
Board of Education Budget
Reductions
Board of Education Budget
Reductions by Object Code
The WHTA membership voted to have a
petition drive for a referendum on the substitute budget. Signatures must be
collected by July 31 and a referendum will be held on the last Tuesday of
September.
06/24/08 – Town Council adopts a substitute
budget representing a 5.5% increase
in spending and a mill rate of 37.09.
Reductions in budget were $1.41 million to the Board of Education and a
total of municipal reductions of $1.18 million.
See the Mayor’s 06/24/08 Budget Reduction Presentation.
06/17/08 – Budget fails in referendum Yes votes = 3,711 No
votes = 7,037
05/27/08 – Referendum date was set to June
17, 2008 by a vote of the Town Council.
05/19/08 – The budget petition drive has
been completed.
Well over 2900 signatures were collected. As of Friday
(05/16/08) - the Town Clerk verified 2400 signatures and only 6% of
registered voters signatures were needed to force a referendum (2264
signatures). As signatures were being gathered the reaction of the public
was that they were pretty fed up with this type of budget increase.
Revaluation aside, cumulatively we have already seen a 36% increase in taxes in
05/16/08 – WHTA has submitted petitions with enough signatures to force a budget
referendum which will be scheduled for June 10 or June 17. The Town Clerk was quoted as saying,
"Assuming that at least 2,264 are verified," Town Clerk Essie Labrot
said Thursday, "they've gone over the required number." (The WHTA has – as of 05/15/08 submitted
336 pages of signatures, with most pages containing 10 signatures to a page)
After checking with the Town Clerk’s office – as of 4:30 on 05/15/08 1851
signatures had been verified of the 2666 that they claimed to have
received. On Friday 05/16/08 more signed
petitions were still being submitted.
04/23/08 – The WHTA membership voted to have a
petition drive for a referendum on the budget. See here for WHTA PAC donation information.
04/22/08 – West Hartford Town Council votes to adopt a new budget
- The $215.9 million municipal budget calls
for a 7 percent increase in spending. The budget will require a property tax
rate of 37.64 mills. The town of
04/16/08 - A list of Town’s Mill rates is
available at the State of CT website or you can download and view the XCel file from here and if you
sort the file you will find that West Hartford is currently ranked 13th highest
mill rate - see chart below.
|
|
63.3900 |
|
|
55.4938 |
|
|
48.9900 |
|
|
45.7600 |
|
|
45.3900 |
|
|
44.7100 |
|
|
44.0600 |
|
|
42.8800 |
|
|
42.2100 |
|
|
41.8600 |
|
|
41.3000 |
|
|
41.2800 |
|
|
38.6300 |
|
|
38.2000 |
|
|
38.2000 |
|
|
36.9000 |
|
|
36.1200 |
|
|
36.0500 |
|
|
35.9700 |
|
|
35.8000 |
04/11/08 - - Robert Sisk has made some
revisions to his initial budget forecast and fine tuned some demographic
information in his Town
of West Hartford 2008-2013 Budget Forecast.
He includes the concept of “Tiebout Sorting” and shows how the ratio of
tax-paying non-school households supporting each public school household will
slip away as those people move out of town due to higher taxes. The result is that more non-school households
are replaced with public school households creating increased demands on
services but the associated tax base does not increase resulting in purely
demand driven increases in property taxes.
It’s a very eye opening analysis of the result of a shift in our
demographic which will be caused by higher taxes that non-public school
households will simply just move out of town to avoid.
04/04/08 - - Robert Sisk’s presentation of the Town of West Hartford
2008-2013 Budget Forecast –Property tax increase of 44% by 2013 if we
continue on this path of tax and spend. You must read this analysis.
04/02/08 – School Board passes their budget calling for $125.4 million in spending
-
Board Adopted Budget $
125,360,572 6.42% - 04/01/08 - Adopted school budget.
03/29/08 –
- West
Hartford School rankings based on schooldigger.com and test scores.
-
West Hartford Taxpayers Association sent a freedom of Information request to
the School Board requesting information about Open Choice students – here was the request and here was the response. Basically our school administration does not
know how much it costs to educate Open Choice students who may be using
remedial resources or special programming – they only know how much they
receive from the Open Choice program ($300,000) and furthermore they do not
seem to want to do any tracking to find out if this program is beneficial or
what the costs of educating these kids are to our own budget.
-
Tax Fat Facts – Some items of
interest pulled out of this
-
Board of Education Spending Trends – Graphic
example of spending, enrollment and salaries.
03/22/08 - -Do you have a question regarding this year's budget? Town
and Board of Education staff and elected officials will answer residents'
questions during a special budget forum to be presented and televised by the League
of Women Voters and
You can submit a question for this budget forum by going to the West Hartford Cable TV website and submitting your
question:
03/14/08 –
Our 2008 tax calculator is now available exclusively from the West
Hartford Taxpayers Association as a service to help you see what your
particular tax will be in 2008-09:
Calculate your property tax based on the 2008-09 proposed
budget and mill rate
using this
calculator (Excel spreadsheet) and the assessment of your property from the
town
property records system. Just plug in the 2005 and 2006 assessments (pre
and post revaluation) shown for your property on the town property records
system, and the calculator will show you what your tax will be with this
proposed budget which is expected to tax us at a 38.11 mill rate.
03/13/08
- The Town
Manager presented his 2008-09 Proposed Town Budget on 3/11/08 - The proposed town
budget is $216 million, representing a 7% spending increase. Town Manager Jim Francis presented an overall education, municipal and capital budget
that would increase spending by about $14 million. The Capital Improvement Proposed Plan is here representing CIP
expenditures for 2009-2020. The spending plan includes Superintendent David P.
Sklarz's proposed $125.5 million budget, a 6.5 percent increase from the
current school budget of $117.8 million and a $73.4 million municipal budget,
which also represents a 6.5 percent increase over the current $68.9 million
budget. New proposed new mill rate is 38.11 and the current mill rate is 38.53,
but we are in the 2nd year of a 5 year property revaluation phase-in so the
lower mill rate will be applied to a higher home value. Add that to increased spending in this budget,
and it nets a significant increase in property tax for most people.
03/04/08 -
Board of Education presented their 2008-09 Proposed
Education Budget – The proposed budget represents a $7.7 million, or
6.53 percent, increase over the current budget of $117.8 million placing the
budget at $125.5 million.
- Executive Budget Summary
- Priorities and Timelines
- 2008-09
Budget
- ECS Shortfall Memo
- Other Town's Budget Increases
02/17/08 -
Budget Schedule from meeting minutes of the Budget and Finance committee (01/16/08) - The proposed FY08
budget will be presented to the Council
on March 11th and the Council must adopt
a budget at their April 22nd meeting.
01/24/08
- Councilman
Visconti, requests some answers in an email to Town Manager Jim Francis regarding the use of
credit cards and other town expenses. Also here is December 19, 2008 Meeting Minutes of the Finance and Budget
Committee
01/15/08
– The Board of Education unanimously voted to approve plans for renovations at
================================================================================
Results of Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Municipal elections in
View Total Votes here, Machine votes here, and
Absentee ballot votes here.
Town
Council -
|
Republicans Leon Davidoff Joe Visconti Steven I. Adler |
Democrats Tim Brennan Carolyn Thornberry Joe Verrengia Scott Slifka Chuck Coursey |
Board
of Education – Joining Libby Spinella (R), Harry Captain (D) and
Jack Darcey (D) are:
4 Year
Term
|
Republicans Diane L. Mudge |
Democrats Terry A. Schmitt Bruce S. Putterman |
2 Year
Term
|
Republican |
Democrat Clare Kindall |
Town
Clerk – Essie S. Labrot (D)
Since We Are An Association Dedicated To The Proposition That Town
Government Can Be Operated Efficiently To Provide Needed Services At A Fair
Cost To The Citizens Of West Hartford, The West Hartford Taxpayers
Association hopes that these elected officials on the Town Council and Board of
Education will:
- Work to Lower our taxes and create fiscally sound
budgets
- Work to Rein In and Control Spending
- Work towards giving
- Work to make programs like Leisure Services
self-sustaining
- Utilize and Manage our town resources wisely and
efficiently
- Work to attract new business to our town
- Give ALL areas of our town the attention they
need
- Maintain excellent quality of life in
- Work to Develop and Implement new revenue streams
and strategies for our town
- Make it their business to be fully informed on the
issues and perform due diligence
- Strengthen Town Government Code of Ethics and
Eliminate Conflict of Interest Issues
- Lobby the State for:
Binding
Arbitration reform
No More Unfunded Mandates For
Municipalities
Proper Funding For Our Town
Property and Income Tax Reform and
Reduction
Please take the time to see the referendum and
budget analysis on our Budget Information page.
============================================================================
WHTA is
providing the public an Microsoft excel
worksheet to calculate their 2007 tax bill for their home. Just plug in the
values for the old property assessment and then the new property assessment and
the worksheet calculate out the rest.
The new mill rate for 2007 taxes is 38.63 and the phase in for
revaluation is still over a 5 year period.
For the first year 25% of the old assessment is added on to the old
assessment (2005 assessment times 1.25, only if your new assessment has gone up
25% or higher) and the balance between that and the new assessment is divided
up into 4 equal amounts and spread out over the remaining 4 years. Those new
assessment amounts will be applied to whatever mill rates are decided in
subsequent years which will also depend on spending levels.
School
Superintendent Sklarz gets a 3.5% increase in salary… The board of education voted 4-2 Friday to approve a
3.5 percent raise for Superintendent David P. Sklarz, and extended the school
chief's contract through 2010. With the increase, the school system's top
administrator will earn more than $188,000 for the 2007-08 school year. His
salary for the just-completed 2006-07 school year was about $182,000. It was
about $176,000 two years ago.
Taxes in
Here is the Mayor’s
Budget presentation.
Here is the Adopted
Budget for 2007-08.
- Spending and Tax Increase Scenarios
– Look and see what levels of spending and taxation would be required for
specific tax increase levels.
************** previous comments and
information is being left here for awhile **********************
Details of what is “on the table” have
finally been released to the public – Now it is up to the taxpayers to suggest other places
in the budget to make more appropriate reductions (please take the time to
review the list of possible reductions below). They even include the
fact that they over estimated what West Hartford will receive in state funding
by $274,332, so now they must find money in the budget to compensate for that
figure as well.
Town Budget Reduction Options – Click
Here - It looks like the
Town Council has resorted to taxpayer retaliation by even suggesting closing town
pools, and the senior center, and the
Education Budget Reduction Options – Post Referendum – Revised June
25th – Click
Here
Spending and Tax Increase Scenarios – Click
Here
Our Mayor has stated: "Everything is on the
table," Slifka said, "but we're guided by the goal of staying as far
away from the classrooms as possible. Information
from the town was provided to the public late in the day on Monday for
Tuesday’s public hearing.
7,893 votes were cast against the
budget
2,939 in favor of the budget
The adopted spending plan went down
in all 20 voting districts.
A total of 10,832 of 36,846 eligible
voters cast ballots, a turnout of 29.4 percent.
Mayor Scott Slifka said, "We
have to respect the result and obviously we have to go back to the drawing
board," (
With this obvious mandate from the
people via referendum, we hope that this mayor and his administration work with
residents and taxpayers to adopt a new budget that addresses the will of the
people to lower taxes significantly.
Some very good ideas have been offered by our community in the course of
budget hearings. We have many
intelligent citizens that can offer solutions to financial issues that we are
facing. WHTA does not want to see
municipal or education programs dismantled entirely. We believe that money can be spent more
wisely on both the municipal and education side of the budget. We want to see
less spending. We want to stop the subsidization by taxpayers, of programs that
should be self-sustaining. We want to
see more money come back to us from the state that is rightfully our money. We
want to see this administration fight for binding arbitration reform and
against more state unfunded mandates. We want to make sure that this
revaluation was fair and equitable.
- WHTA Press Release - WHTA's RESPONSE
REGARDING THE BUDGET, THE REFERENDUM, AND MISINFORMATION ALLEGATIONS –
06/15/07
- Press release from
Governor Rell - Governor
Rell Cites Numerous Municipal Budget Rejections as Evidence of Need for
Property Tax Cap - Governor M. Jodi Rell today said Tuesday’s
rejection of the West Hartford town budget – the latest in a long string of
failed municipal budget proposals – makes it clear that her call for a limit on
annual property tax increases is desperately needed.
“From one
end of
The Citizens want responsible
spending.
Older citizens, and young families,
of all party affiliations rejected:
A
Mill rate of 39.39 mills
Increase
in Overall Budget of $6.84 million dollars over
last year,
A 3.48% increase in
And
a 6.6% increase on their existing tax bill!
WHTA is making this Microsoft Excel worksheet
available for you to be able to calculate
your tax bill with a 5 year phase in and mill rate of 39.39. Click here for the Microsoft Excel worksheet. (You must have Microsoft
Excel to use this).
Interesting to Note: The
The
5 year phase in of the new assessments based on
last Revaluation for everyone
(The calculation to figure out your
assessment is forthcoming)
Mill rate of 39.39 mills
Increase in Overall Budget of $6.84 million dollars over last year,
which is a 3.48%
increase in spending (That is clearly NOT a 2.5% increase folks!)
Virtually all homeowners in town will pay 6.6% more on their existing tax bill!
How did they “reduce” the budget
from their original proposal?
They cut school spending by $1.8
million more than the BOE adopted
They “reduced” additional municipal
spending by $2.3 million
And they just added $3.5 million to
the amount they think we’ll get back from the state!
This adopted budget reflects a
manipulation of expected non-tax revenues
from the state and also town revenues
and it also represents minor
decreases in initial proposed spending!
Adopted Budget Summary – Click Here
Original proposed budget available online – click here
--------------
Current
Education budget 2006-07 = $113.5 million
The
Board of Education approved their 2007-08 budget of $120.1 million,
representing a 5.86% increase over the current budget.
The Town Council has voted to require $1.8 million in additional cuts to be determined by Superintendent Sklarz and the Board of Education on that budget.
With
that cut, education spending would be $118.3
($4.8 million more than current budget) or a 4.2% increase in spending.
--------------
Some Points to Consider:
Phase in will insure an increase in your
tax this year and over the next 4 years after that
even if there is no increase in
spending!
If the new assessment is inaccurate to
begin with, which some people have affirmed,
then you may be paying more money based
on a flawed assessment.
125% of your old assessment will be
subject to a high mill rate of 39.39 in your 2007 tax bill.
The Town administration claims that the
mill rate will “drop” to 29.17 mills over the 5 year phase in –
but there is no guarantee that it
will because
we will also be subject to more
increased spending and MDC costs in subsequent years!
To achieve a 29.17 mill rate they would
have to have no increases in spending at all!
That is not only unrealistic but it is
misleading to the taxpayer.
This budget is based on assumptions of
money we will receive from the state which may or may not be accurate.
They should only assume we will get what
we got last year from the state, or less.
Clearly the budget numbers are being
made to look better based on “iffy” projections of non-tax revenue.
The Town has not addressed money being
lost on Leisure Services, Adult Education programs or Summer School. Programs that were promised to be
self-sufficient (like Cornerstone Pool and the Veterans Memorial Skating Rink)
are not
self-sufficient, and are currently being heavily subsidized by the taxpayer.
The Town has not addressed what they
plan to do to fight for binding arbitration reform.