I guess we should be used to it by now, but when will Hartford's voters wake up and start holding our elected officials accountable.
Does anyone else besides me find it interesting that last year before Hartford's elections for City Council, the incumbents let everyone know what a fine job they were doing with Hartford's budget. They were doing so well in fact that not only did the incumbents authorize not just one tax cut, but two tax cuts totalling a full one mill cut.
That amounted to next to nothing for most taxpayers in the city since they are already burdened with the highest mill rate in the State. A "mill" equals one dollar of taxes for every $1,000 taxed, so with a mill rate of 71.79 mills, Hartford's taxpayers are paying $71.79 dollars per every thousand of assessed value. ( A vehicle assessed at $10,000 would be taxed at $717.90 per year)
Well the incumbents were able to sell themselves as doing a great job with the budget, but as a candidate I was pretty comfortable saying it was election year posturing. Well, here we are 3 months after the election and it now seems that the incumbents were not doing the wonderful job they sold to the voters to get their votes.
Our projected deficit for this year keeps growing and will probably be much great than the $3.5 million dollars they are now projecting, the projected deficit for next year has already grown from $54 million to $56 million in about a week and I'm sure it will get much worse.
It might be nice to see elected officials that are willing to tell the truth and actually address the problems, no matter how unpleasant the truth is. The first step in that direction is to actually control and reduce spending. Hartford can not sustain its current budget and the taxpayers can not be asked to shoulder anymore of the burden. We already pay double what most other municipalities in the State pay.
But I am sure that by the time the next election cycle comes around, most voters will listen to the empty promises and not look back at the historical facts.
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