Dear superrich New Yorkers: Don’t leave us

New York City doesn’t want you, but Connecticut does. Please stay, superrich New Yorkers. Please continue to take refuge in Connecticut’s leafy suburbs. And invite your superrich friends — the ones targeted by New York’s new millionaires tax. New Yorkers resent you for leaving during the pandemic. The New York Times made that clear in “Some New Yorkers Don’t Want the Superrich to Return.” And boneheaded legislators in Albany are now trying to drive out your rich friends as well with the highest personal income taxes in the nation.

Yoo-hoo! Over here! Connecticut is a bargain by comparison. We are just a train ride away. We have trees, beaches, backyards. We have wonderful schools. And yes, we do have lower taxes than you.

We’ve often been your sanctuary. We were your haven in the 1970s, when your city was at risk of dropping dead. You kept coming to us in the 1980s and ’90s. “Upper Hedgistan,” you still fondly call the Interstate-95 corridor through Greenwich.

The suburbs fell a bit out of favor with city-loving young professionals in the ’10s. But how quickly you rushed to our bucolic shelter when COVID-19 hit. Our suburbs, to quote the Wall Street Journal, became “cool again.”

Why go back to the cold canyons of New York? Stay here. Our governor won’t raise taxes on you. He likes to say, “We don’t need more taxes, we need more taxpayers.” Amen.

Florida? Oh, forget Florida. No, we are not income-tax-free Florida, nor do we aspire to be. We have so much more to offer. A lovely lawn above water, for one thing.

Frankly, we fail to see the attraction of that weird state.

So what if Florida has no income tax? You get what you pay for. In Connecticut, you pay for some of the highest quality K-12 schools in the United States. Florida is way down on the list. Nice place to visit, but …

What you do pay for in Florida is insurance. Florida has the second highest costs in the nation (behind

Texas) because of natural disasters. Its average home insurance rate is higher than Connecticut’s.

Oh, and before we forget, Florida’s violent crime rate is twice Connecticut’s.

Connecticut, may we point out, is in the Top 10 happiest states. We’ve been the setting for such Hallmark-type stuff as “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.”

Florida? “Scarface.” “Miami Vice.” Horror show.

We admit to loving Florida for spring break. But only for a week. Then we want to go home to Connecticut.

And so, these days, do New Yorkers. More than 30,000 of you changed your address to Connecticut last year.

We are once again a sanctuary for the huddled masses of the Empire State yearning to breathe free.

Welcome, New Yorkers. We’ve been expecting you. Bring your friends.

We admit to loving Florida for spring break. But only for a week. Then we want to go home to Connecticut.