NL petition seeks to curb tax hike

New London — The city clerk has certified petitions that seek to force the City Council to revisit and reduce the general government and education budgets.

City Clerk Jonathan Ayala said notices to petition circulators were sent out on Thursday. Each of the petitions contained more than the required 340 signatures.

“The aim is to reduce the budget,” said Dan McSparran, who spearheaded the petition drive. “The budget is too high. You’re talking better than a 9 percent tax increase, which is outrageous.”

The petition is expected to be taken up by the City Council at its next meeting on July 3. The council will have the option to repeal the budgets and adopt revised spending plans, call for a special election to allow for a citywide vote or move a question to the ballot during November’s municipal election.

McSparran said that, in his opinion, the council “needs to make a real reduction to the budget and come up with a zero tax increase or an overall

tax reduction.”

The City Council in May passed a combined $90.05 million spending plan for fiscal year 2018 with an accompanying tax rate hike of more than 9 percent. The mill rate would climb from 40.46 mills to 44.26 mills under the plan.

The budget contains a $48.3 million general government budget and $41.7 million in school spending.

The general government budget is a 5 percent increase over this year’s budget and school funding is a 1.71 percent decrease, though it requires more taxpayer funds toward the school district’s $69.8 million overall budget because of the drop in state Educational Cost Sharing grant funds.

The City Council traditionally only considers the portion of the school budget that is funded by taxpayers and ECS funds, which flow through the city. The rest of the school budget is funded through various grants.

Mayor Michael Passero said the drop in state funding to the city this year is unprecedented, estimated to be a decrease of $2.5 million or 8 percent, and is driving the tax rate hike. The city also faces increased debt service, health insurance, pension and personnel costs.

In a sentiment echoed by several City Council members, Passero said the budget cannot sustain any deeper cuts without cutting services, positions and placing New London in a position that would make it harder to attract much-needed economic development and increased revenues.

“For me, to cut $4 million, we’d have nothing,” Passero said. “That’s the bottom line. You’re not going to have anything that makes the city attractive and solve the problems of revenue.”

McSparran said the city administration has not done enough to attract revenue and instead added city positions. The school district has higher than average administrative costs despite a lack of overall student improvement.

“Administrative overhead is better than 30 percent above the state average and our schools are still ranked at the bottom,” McSparran said.

Board of Education President Scott Garbini said the school district is not being accurately portrayed by “naysayers.”

“If our schools were failing, we wouldn’t have people moving into town. We wouldn’t be building new schools. We wouldn’t be receiving accolades from the state about how we are doing and what we are doing as a district,” Garbini said. “We don’t spend exorbitant amounts on administration and those who feel that way should come and spend a day in Central Office seeing what people actually do.”

Republican Town Committee Chairwoman Shannon Brenek said she considered the petition drive a service to the community. Citizens were looking for a way to take action, she said.

“This wasn’t a situation where you had to educate the voters in order to convince them,” Brenek said. “They wanted a voice and were seeking out a means.”

More than 600 people signed each of the two petitions. In addition to McSparran, petition circulators included Steven Brenek, Karen Paul, Tim Ryan and Sheryl Lawrence.

In the end, Passero said the petition might end up aiding the City Council.

If the state legislature passes a budget and if that budget increases aid to New London, the council now will have the option to replace state revenue estimates in the city’s budget with real numbers.

Hopefully, Passero said, state revenues will increase and the tax hike will drop.