Politics & Government

Mayor Proposes $181.3 Million Budget

Average home will see taxes rise by about $32, mayor says.

Mayor Scott Jackson presented his 2011-12 proposed budget to the Legislative Council Thursday night that includes a 2 percent spending increase and sets the mill rate at 34.51 mill rate.

Jackson proposed a $181.3 million budget for the next fiscal year, up from the current $177.5 million budget.

But whether an individual's property tax will increase depends upon the new assessments that came as a result of the recently completed revaluation.

Find out what's happening in Hamdenwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The average home in Hamden decreased in value, Jackson said, from $189,000 to $$171,600. For the current fiscal year, that homeowner paid $5,889.24; under Jackson's proposal, they would pay $5,921.92, an increase of $32.68.

But not all assessments decreased -- over all, commercial assessments actually increased, meaning their taxes could rise substantially. Read about the affect revaluation had on the grand list here.

Find out what's happening in Hamdenwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The mayor budgeted $80,115,000 to the Board of Education, $1,865,000 more than the current $78,250,000 school budget. But $1 million of that increase is actually federal stimulus funds the school board received this year and saved for next year, bringing the actual increase to $865,000.

That's about $350,000 less than what the school board requested, and could lead to layoffs, Supt. of Schools Fran Rabinowitz said.

"I don't think we can get to that percentage without layoffs," she said after Jackson's presentation Thursday. "I'm hoping we can work something out with an early retirement incentive so we can hold on to our staff without having to lay off anyone."

Jackson said one of his goals in formulating the proposed budget was to make sure no town employees lost their jobs, unlike last year, when there were layoffs in several departments.

To accomplish that, he has asked all of the town's unions for concessions, including .5 percent wage increases and an additional $750,000 in concessions.

"These are true concession requests -- not deferments," he said. In all, unions are giving up about $2.1 million, he said. which "will allow us to pass a budget that is good for the town, good for our residents and good for our employees."

"The budget before you is a balanced, conservative, responsible budget," Jackson told the council. "It preserves our core services and keeps our taxes stable.

The town is slated to get about a half million dollars less from the state than it got this year, Jackson said.

"Because this is a revaluation year, there's no simple way to compare the current mill rate of 31.16 with the proposed mill rate of $34.51," Jackson said. "This is not a 10 percent increase in taxes."

With an average decrease of 10 percent in residential property assessments, the proposed mill rate represents an increase of about one half of one percent, he said.

And condominium owners would actually see a decrease in taxes because those assessments went down even more, he said. Over all, 90 percent of residential properties decreased in value after revaluation, he said.

Seniors will continue to enjoy the tax freeze implemented last year, Jackson said.

"Helping the residents who built this town to say in their homes as long as they want to is a Hamden value we need to preserve," he said.

Projected health care costs are fully funded, Jackson said, in contrast to the $8 million deficits run last year. The town is self-insured and pays Anthem a fee to administer the program.

"Both Anthem, our carrier, and a private consultant approved by the Legislative Council submitted estimates for next year's medical costs, and we have fully funded these estimates to make every effort to ensure that the fund will not run in deficit again," Jackson said. "This level of funding has not been applied in over a decade, and possibly not since the inception of the fund."

The proposal allocates only $3 million to the town's pension fund, Jackson said, which is "not what I would have liked it to be.

"However, of the town's financial priorities, the pension fund has moved behind the restoration of our fund balance and medical self insurance funding in its financial stability prioritization," he said.

"Municipalities cannot afford to continue the same ways of doing business with regard to pensions," he said, adding that town employees need to move to a 401K system "where employees must take an active role in planning for their retirement."


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