To the Editor:
Tax trickery at Budget Time strikes the East Haven Tax payer again.
The Democratic Administration, before the latest election, gave the tax payer a Zero Tax increase for the first two years in office. While trying to get to the bottom of the Budget Problems inherited that first year.
In the third year, we the town’s tax payers had to bite the bullet with a 17% mil increase to meet the State of Connecticut’s Mandate to pay off any deficit within that fiscal year. saw the mil rate come down a quarter of a mil.
The town achieved its goal of paying off a $5.1 million dollar debt and leaving a surplus in the fund balance, a , but still a surplus. The mill rate increase allowed for that to happen.
The town collected enough money to pay down $3.6 million of the debt and the to the Tweed Airport of $1.5 million took care of the rest. The town even had enough money to leave .
Enter the Maturo administration, No debt, a surplus, and a tax rate that raised over $3.8 million dollars to achieve what I just explained. So my question is, why do we that raise’s TAX REVENUES more than a million dollars above what the town needed last year?
It seems to me if the revenue side of the budget was left alone the town would have $3.8 million dollars to increase expenditures if that is needed. Or the Mayor could live up to his campaign promise to roll back taxes. (New Budget, $86,708,754-Last Year's Budget, $85,275,670=$1,433,084 Tax Increase)
So why the trickery to raise the revenue by more than a million bucks? And as the Democratic Town Chairman I’m sad to say four out of five Democrats on the town council fell victim to this charade, along with the nine Republicans making up our .
Sad for us, THE TAX PAYER.
Gene Ruocco
(Editor's Note: All links to to previous stories in this post added by East Haven Patch.)
