It’s too bad this is a municipal election year because one of the most important issues facing Norwalk is about to spun in campaign lingo. Today’s Advocate reports that a $2.4 million dollar surplus is prompting mayoral candidates to weigh in. First the spin, opening graf.

A surge in budget surpluses over several years has prompted city officials to start dumping some of the savings back into operating budgets to keep taxes down.

Dumping the savings? How noble. The real examination of infrastructure needs is glossed over though, with Walter Briggs making one nebulous statement and Mayor Moccia making another based on the assumption that DPW director Hal Alvord has but one focus.

Democratic mayoral candidate Walter Briggs disagrees. He issued a statement last week suggesting extra money in the fund balance could be put to better use fixing the city’s flooding problems caused by an aging storm drainage system.

“Last year, they used some of the money to basically keep taxes down - they didn’t actually lower taxes, they just didn’t raise them as much,” Briggs said. “That’s a disservice to citizens. We have to use this kind of money to fix the sewers.”

“I don’t have a problem with returning money to the taxpayers,” he said. “The problem is, what this does is give taxpayers cause for hope they’re going to be able to manage our budget without raising taxes, and that’s not true.”

Mayor Richard Moccia stood by the choice to return fund balance money to the operating budgets.

“We need to keep up the AAA bond rating and hopefully to cut the tax rate,” he said. Even if the money were available for storm drain replacement and repair, engineering plans would have to be in place, Moccia said.

The infrastructure issues facing Norwalk extend beyond whether there is an engineering plan in place or not to address some of the flooding issues. The problem is that DPW has several glaring problems that no one wants to address fully.

Take my monthly observations about Osborne Ave. This street is the poster child of a permitting process that is broken within the city. The first taxing district has hired a contractor incapable of replacing a water pipe since April. They have continuously dug up parts of Osborne Ave. leaving rutted patches, holes and bumps in place of a road. DPW has only one permit inspector who apparently spends more time inspecting permits for compliance at the outset, instead of work completed. In a city the size of Manhattan, one inspector. Yet, year after year, the request for road encroachment inspection and enforcement is never brought to the council or mayor. The DPW has a stack of complaints about the road, yet the First Taxing District claims there are few complaints. This is a common game played, along with the classic “the work should be completed next week.” Alvord has proposed that the problem exists because the department needs software to track open permits and when bonds expire. Apparently he doesn’t encourage the concept of achieving task goals that were once accomplished routinely in the days before computerized project management, like the 80’s.
Meanwhile, Hal Alvord maintains that nothing can be fixed in the flooding areas of East Norwalk because DPW is still in the stage of figuring out what to do in order to fix the problem. They are looking specifically at the storm water drainage system, yet it has been observed that water spews like a geyser from sewage man holes. This is because there are many homes that have hooked up storm drainage pipes to the sewer system and not the storm water drainage system. This doesn’t require extensive engineering to fix, a smoke test will reveal the hookups. This was successfully done and enforced on Westport ave. The hookups on Olmstead Place apparently are still there, with no one from DPW following up to enforce corrective action.

There is a political discussion that should be taking place, by both sides. Mayor Moccia should be questioning the entire history of DPW common council chairs since 2001. All of the issues, from paving, to flooding have been brought before the common council committees by residents only to see the issues fade away from focus as each year brings a new “crisis” that supplants the previous years. But Briggs, isn’t the problem. Kevin Poruban and Bill Krummel are largely responsible for the inaction of oversight of DPW and thus responsible for the lack of funding over the years, and in particular the last two years. Instead we get this exchange:

Public Works Director Harold Alvord said there is a plan for renovating the storm drain system.

Alvord said the Department of Public Works hired McVac Environmental Services of New Haven last year to study eight problem sites and propose solutions. The department requested several million dollars last year for improvements to the drain system but received only $250,000, he said.

Moccia said Briggs could have provided more money for storm drainage improvements when he was chairman of the Common Council’s Planning Committee in 2003 and 2004.

Instead, he’s bringing up the issue before Election Day, Moccia said. Moccia noted that in 2004, the DPW requested $400,000 for capital projects over the following four years, but the Planning Committee, led by Briggs, recommended $250,000.

“That’s true,” Briggs said. But he said that his committee felt obligated to honor spending levels proposed by Hamilton.

“Mr. Hamilton works for the mayor,” Briggs said of the finance director. “Obviously, he doesn’t work for me.”

A completely useless discussion since it doesn’t address what Norwalk needs short term and long term form an infrastructure perspective. At this point DPW has no overarching directive to fund and plan for infrastructure maintenance and improvements on a 5, 10 and 15 year time line that consistently gets funded because politicians prefer to play to the 2 year election cycle instead of the longer, totally unsexy, long term capital spending on infrastructure plans.

In the macro, the $2.4 million that the BET plans to shift gets split into the rainy day fund ($1 million) and into the restricted fund balance ($1.4 million.) Presumably the council will vote on authorizations of uses from the restricted fund balance, but the tax payer is not likely to see a tax decrease. The real problem remains that BOE budget its defenders and the continual financial wreck that team Corda has deployed on the Norwalk taxpayer. Until the BOE allocations get reduced, the Norwalk tax payer will continue to pay higher taxes no matter what happens on the city side. Making it seem like tax savings are to be had on the city side is what led to years of infrastructure neglect in the past. I’d like to see Norwalk not head down this path of repeat history.

source: Advocate, City officials eye surplus to cut tax bite, By Kerry Wills, October 7, 2007