Mayor offers 2% tax cut this year
No new money for schools’ regular budget, but $500K one-time payment proposed
New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart’s proposed budget comes with a novel feature: a 2% tax cut.
The city won’t need to cut staff or services, Stewart said, but can reduce the average residents’ bill for property and vehicle taxes by about $350.
“The way things were going for the past year, there hasn’t been a more important time to provide relief to our community,” Stewart said Wednesday. “The unemployment numbers we were going through in the COVID pandemic were really eye-opening.”
Stewart’s $243.1 million proposal relies heavily on an influx of state aid from Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration, enough to allow spending increases for the three biggest departments: police, fire and public works.
However, for the fifth year in a row Stewart is offering no new money for the school system’s regular operating budget.
She proposes putting another $500,000 into a savings for the schools, though, and is pledging to give educators any budget surplus left after New Britain’s 2020-21 budget ends. As a one-time contribution to a special account, that would give money to education but won’t guarantee the same amount in future years.
The Republican-dominated common council will vote on a budget later this spring. The Democratic minority and education advocates are almost certain to lobby for more school spending, which has been flat funded through years of rising contractual costs.
Stewart’s administration has emphasized that state and federal education grants have risen during
that time. And to help through the pandemic, New Britain schools this year are receiving $23 million in federal aid and are scheduled to get another $55.3 million through President Biden’s American Rescue Act.
But Democrats said Thursday that Stewart’s administration itself needs to do better.
“The mayor chose the politically expedient option of cutting taxes in an election year rather than seizing on the opportunity to address the chronic underfunding that leaves NewBritain’s children in the second lowest-funded school district in the state,” school board President Merrill Gay said.
“Public education has been short-changed for the past five years. Enough is enough,” said state Rep. Robert Sanchez, who intends to run against her in the November election. “How can our city attract new residents and economic vitality after the pandemic by not investing in our future?”
Sanchez called her proposal “political games during an election year.”
Council Assistant Minority Leader Chris Anderson called her plan “bad fiscal management” that will force higher taxes in the future.
“Dangling lower taxes before voters is the ultimate election year gimmick,” he said. “We need long-term solutions to our structural financial problems, not short-term reelection strategies.”
Stewart countered that several one-time revenue components of her budget will bring new development and future taxes. New Britain is expecting $2.8 million selling city land, for instance. Some of that will be from the delayed sale of land to Polymer Precision Engineering to expand its operations, and the rest from selling land across Hartford Road from Target.
That acreage is expected to be large-scale retail development in the near future.
Stewart is budgeting more than $1 million to demolish the longclosed Saint Thomas Aquinas School and clear any pollution. That money is an investment in future private development, she said.
“I have spent the last eight years trying to achieve financial stability for this City and I am proud of this budget that brings much needed financial relief to New Britain residents while increasing funding to the City’s Education Savings Account,” she said.
Leaders in most Connecticut communities are proposing tax increases this year with a range of numbers: Cheshire wants 4.6% more, Rocky Hill seeks 6.5%, Wethersfield proposes 4.3%.
Among the exceptions are Enfield and South Windsor, which each propose to hold their tax rate steady in 2021-22. New Milford is talking about a nearly 2.5% tax cut.
Stewart’s budget doesn’t include any of the federal COVID relief aid earmarked for the city; the federal government has made clear that money can’t be used to pay for a tax cut.
But New Britain is benefiting from about $7.1 million in extra state aid, some for distressed cities and some to cover losses from tax-exempt property in the city.