Politics & Government

Town Council Adopts Budget With 2.76% Tax Rate Increase

Republicans offer unsuccessful amendments calling for union benefit concessions.

The town council on Tuesday approved a budget that calls for a tax rate increase of 2.76 percent, which will raise taxes on a home with a market value of $316,000 by about $180 a year. The three Republicans on the council did not support the budget as proposed and offered numerous amendments, but the Democratic majority of six had the votes to approve it.

Town Manager Ron Van Winkle's original budget proposal called for a tax rate increase of 4.6 percent, but he subsequently proposed adjustments that brought the increase down to 2.76 percent. Those adjustments included increasing parking meter revenue by $130,000 and using surplus funds from this year's budget of $640,000, among others.

New Republican council member Burke Doar made his voice known during the lengthy budget discussion by proposing a number of amendments that would have reduced town spending, including asking both school and town employee unions for significant benefit concessions. Doar said the town should not be increasing taxes during a difficult economy.

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"It's the issue of whether we are pricing ourselves out of the market," he said. "I'm afraid we're coming to a tipping point and we're going to start losing the ability to attract families to West Hartford."

Several Democratic council members told Doar they were worried about a tipping point from a different perspective — that reducing the board of education or town budgets significantly would cut into services and drive families away.

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Harry Captain, also a new council member, said the town could never renegotiate the teachers' union contract — in which teachers accepted a hard freeze for next year and only a step increase the next — to gain more concessions on benefits.

"This is an incredible contract," Captain said. "This is a terrific gift that the teachers should be congratulated for and thanked."

In addition to the budget decision, the council approved an amendment to the budget that adds a list of  five major policy issues — the biggest budget drivers — to tackle over the next year. Such issues are often discussed at meetings, Slifka said, but in the past haven't been identified specifically as policy goals.

"It's never been encompassed in a document," Slifka said. "What we strugged with was trying to identify items we have targeted that we know need action but couldn't be completed this year."

The top issue is health care, and the goal is to "aggressively pursue strategies and engage our unions to further reduce these costs."

The second is Education Cost Sharing, including an effort to "work with the governor's commission on ECS reform to improve West Hartford's ECS share, in particular by incorporating new census data and special education figures."

A third big issue is spending on the Fire Department with a goal of "reducing overtime and facilities costs, including a review of opportunities for regionalism.:

The other two issues are alternative revenue generation by using town land or property to generate revenues, and an updated information technology system that "creates efficiencies, improves reliability and maintains security of data."


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