Tagged: taxes

Things To Ask, Things To Tell

A quick scan of the headlines this week reveals that our elected officials are clueless.

Point one. Yes, unemployment is a problem, but extending unemployment benefits doesn’t solve the problem. It punts the problem to the next time those benefits expire because if you haven’t found a job by now, there either isn’t a job available or your skills and work experience are irrelevant. Meanwhile there’s a whole lot of stuff that the government should be doing in the job creation area that they are ignoring because of point two–Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Why has this suddenly become a national fixation? Now? In this economy? See point one. Of course the fact that old white men are freaked out over homosexuality is understandable. They’re freaked out by everything, so what else is new? But old white men have proven to be, over time, out of touch with most things on the planet. Think “The Earth is flat“– and go through the long winding road of history.

So, who starts wars? Old white men. Who fights in wars? Young men. So my only conclusion in this is that old white men want to kill young men by sending them to wars where they’ve alread banned women in combat so they are left with being afraid that those young men may encounter gay sex in combat or something, which must mean that the old white men are just jealous of young men because they might be getting some. It would explain the preoccupation of the old white men security freaks insisting that full naked body scans are an imperative too.

And that whole Viagra is covered by health insurance but birth control isn’t? Frankly with that whole Larry Craig thing in the airport bathrooms tapping his foot maybe the halls of Congress are a little scary to old white men. On the one hand you have all this foot tapping and then there’s all that climate change stuff that really scares them. Imagine, to be told that the air conditioner that you run while you are out playing golf, might, just might, be contributing to those dried out greens which make those little golf balls go faster. Do they think that the greens fees might be going up because the water demands are higher when its hotter? I don’t think so. They are in denial, and I don’t mean the river in Egypt, although that would be a good place for them to hang out.

Then there’s point three. Extending tax cuts. Because extending tax cuts worked out really well in stimulating the economy, right? The economy basically looked okay for years because Wall Street had figured out how they could play monopoly with America’s real estate and sold off all the little red buildings and green houses in one massive ponzi scheme, and all that we got out of it was granite counter tops and big screen plasma tvs and more debt that we the people had to bail the big banks out of. See how that worked out for us? You really want to now give a tax cut to the very same people who caused this whole mess? I don’t think so. Then again, I’m not an old white man. But I guess you’ve figured that out by now.

Norwalk or Rowayton?

The Hour ran a story which posed this intriguing headline question,
Rowayton or Norwalk? … Difference is costly: the story:

When Edward Brookshire received a letter from the city, informing him that he owed additional property taxes for his property on Briar Street, he called City Hall to inquire.

“That’s when we found out, ‘You’re in Norwalk, not Rowayton, and that’s why it’s going to cost you more money,’” Brookshire said. “I bought (my home) based on the assumption that I was buying into Rowayton, not Norwalk. And now for the city suddenly to change their mind, they’re potentially costing me significant property value, and I don’t see how they have the right to do that.”

Brookshire’s home is one of a number of properties that straddle the border between the 6th Taxing District, which essentially is Rowayton, and the 4th and 5th Taxing districts. His address is 2 Briar St. in Rowayton. But his driveway, which is shared with a neighbor, exits onto Devil’s Garden Road in Norwalk.

Ahem, well buckaroos, Rowayton is Norwalk. Just like Southport is Fairfield and Black Rock is Bridgeport.

The issue that is driving all this hullabaloo is of course property taxes. Which the fine citizens of the Peoples Republic of Rowayton all pay to, ahem, the city of Norwalk. The confusion over what town one lives is though, is really one about taxing districts, a vestigial artifact left over because decades of political flunkies in Norwalk can’t figure out how to get rid of them.

The taxing districts supposedly provide services to the residents within them, except when they don’t, and they have their own form of government, except when they don’t.  When we get to the bottom of the whole thing– Norwalk has a bunch of taxing districts, meritorious or not, and they each complicate the picture of figuring out how much property taxes one pays because it’s somewhat complicated to determine what services from the city of Norwalk one gets. Convoluted? Sure.

According to Robert F. Maslan Jr., Norwalk has four taxing districts with separate governing bodies (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 6th), two taxing districts that function as sewered and non-sewered areas within the entire city (the 4th, sewered, and 5th, non-sewered), and the 7th Taxing District, which was created to apply the proper mill rate to sewered properties in the 6th District. While accepting that the changes do affect tax bills, Maslan rejects that the properties were moved into or out of Rowayton. Rather, the changes were made to apply the correct mill rates to the properties.

“No properties are being taken out of Rowayton. No properties are being put into Rowayton. This is simply applying the correct mill rate based upon the services that the properties are being provided,” Maslan said. “The way to look at it is some people have been getting services without paying for them. Now they’re paying.”

Thirty properties that straddle the border between the 6th Taxing District and the 4th or 5th Taxing districts were subject to the reassignment, according to Common Councilwoman Nora K. King and 6th Taxing District Commissioner Michael Barbis. They consider the city’s action unfair to property owners and say it was done without consulting residents.

Yes it is unfair for residents to use services that they aren’t paying for too. Unhook those sewer lines and pay for private garbage pick up and maybe there’s a story there.

Never breaking stride, Malloy makes candidacy official.

One week ago today, Dan Malloy officially became a candidate for Governor.
Video:


Malloy continued his torrid pace of appearances, appearing on WFSB’s Face the State, answering questions from panelists Daniela Altimari of The Hartford Courant, Ted Mann of The Day, and host Dennis House.
Video (thanks to ctblogger):


Malloy’s Sunday appearances included a conversation with Connecticut Newsmakers host Tom Monahan.
Video (thanks again to ctblogger):


There’s more after the jump…
Continue reading

Investing In Your City, A Tale of Norwalk versus Stamford

There’s a type of populism that goes like this, we don’t want our tax dollars to subsidize developers. But like the federal tarp bailouts, the beneficiaries of investment in development is not just the developers, its the residents and tax payers of Norwalk.

How can this be so?

You have to start with an understanding of finance. The taxes you pay are determined by very few things. One is how much taxable assets are out there, otherwise known as the grand list. The finance department spends months counting all the expenditures the City is the hook for and then takes that number and divides it by the grand list to arrive at the average mill rate.

Tax Levy $ 246,269,456
Divided by: Net Taxable Grand List $12,571,603,519
Equals: Average Mill Rate 19.589

Because we are Norwalk, there’s just not one mill rate. No we have taxing districts that confuse things, and so here’s the chart reflecting the actual mill rates for Norwalk in 2008.

103

1

Norwalk 1st

19.779

2008

103

2

Norwalk 2nd

19.779

2008

103

3

Norwalk 3rd

19.779

2008

103

4

Norwalk 4th

19.840

2008

103

5

Norwalk 5th

19.365

2008

103

6

Norwalk 6th

18.226

2008

103

7

Norwalk 7th

18.226

2008

103

8

Norwalk 8th

19.779

2008

103

9

Norwalk 9th

19.779

2008

103

10

Norwalk Motor Vehicle Rate

24.355

2008

103

1

Norwalk 1st No Garbage

19.304

2008

103

2

Norwalk 2nd No Garbage

19.304

2008

103

3

Norwalk 3rd No Garbage

19.304

2008

103

4

Norwalk 4th No Garbage

19.365

2008

Mill Rates for all towns 2008 Grand Lists.

Stamford has managed to whittle down their special services districts too a more manageable number.

135

0

Stamford Motor Vehicles

26.50

2008

135

1

Stamford “A”

16.82

2008

135

2

Stamford “B”

16.45

2008

135

3

Stamford “C”

15.68

2008

135

4

Stamford “CS”

16.01

2008

135

5

Stamford Pprop Other than MV

16.82

2008

And towns like Shelton, are simpler still.

126

0

Shelton

18.61

2008

Five years ago Norwalk and Stamford were about $3.5 billion apart in total grand list value. Call it 2 or 3 big developments and we’d be even. Today we are just under $12 billion apart. Call it the price of not keeping pace.

Stamford 2008 Grand List $24,263,665,000

Stamford 2003 Grand List $11,092,432,000

Norwalk 2008 Grand List $12,571,603,519

Norwalk 2003 Grand List $7,481,828,000

The tax benefit to residents of Stamford? It looks like a decline of close to 10 in the millrate.

Stamford Motor Vehicles 30.25 2003
Stamford “A” 26.16 2003
Stamford “B” 26.03 2003
Stamford “C” 24.59 2003
Stamford “CS” 25.11 2003
Stamford Pprop Other than MV 27.44 2003
Norwalk, Motor Vehicles NA 2003
Norwalk 1st 31.87 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 1st No Garbage NA 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 2nd 31.87 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 2nd No Garbage NA 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 3rd 31.87 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 3rd No Garbage NA 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 4th 31.98 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 4th No Garbage NA 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 5th 31.14 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 6th 29.63 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 7th 29.63 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 8th 31.87 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 8th No Garbage NA 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 9th 31.87 2003/Phase-In
Norwalk 9th No Garbage NA 2003/Phase-In

Seeing that Norwalk had as 2003 phase in I looked to see what 2004 looked like. I think it’s safe to say that Norwalk saw a 5% reduction in mill rate in the same period.

Norwalk 1st 25.1 2004
Norwalk 10th 25.21 2004
Norwalk 6th 23.47 2004
Norwalk 5th 24.56 2004
Norwalk 4th 25.21 2004
Norwalk 3rd No Garbage 24.45 2004
Norwalk 3rd 25.1 2004
Norwalk 2nd No Garbage 24.45 2004
Norwalk 1st No Garbage 24.45 2004
Norwalk2nd 25.1 2004

From a practical standpoint, this means that for your $300,000 in assessed value in Stamford your real estate taxes in 2003 and 2008 respectively would be $7800 and $4800 and in Norwalk they would be $7500 and $6000.

So what would have happened if the Norwalk grand list grew in the same proportionality as Stamford’s list? Our grand list would be closer to 16,347,794,000 and that would have resulted in a 15 and a tax bill of $4500 on our same hypothetical 300k assessed value.

So the next time your not so friendly populist activist out there starts giving you this free investment advice about how bad investing in development with tax payer subsidies is, think about how much more of a return it would have been on your tax dollar investment has Norwalk made a better effort on reinvesting in itself as a city. Wouldn’t it have been nice to see a tax bill that keeps going down because the City of Norwalk reinvests in itself?

I’m sure all you finance wizards out there will notice I rounded numbers and didn’t factor in some variables, so feel free to correct the basic math.

Reducing health care expenses for small businesses & municipalities.

AFSCME Council 4 President Sal Luciano, Mayor Dan Malloy of Stamford, and CEA Executive Director John Yrchick speaking in support of the health care pooling bill currently under consideration in the Legislature, Christine Stuart reports at CT News Junkie.

Excerpt:

“Extraordinary times require government to do extraordinarily difficult things. This is not one of those, “Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy said. “This is easy.”

Malloy, whose city saw double-digit increases in health care costs last year said this type of legislation simply makes sense. …

Last year Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a similar bill. …

Malloy said this year people know more about the bill than they did last year when it was first introduced.

Lowering health care costs for municipalities, not for profits, and small businesses is an idea everyone should support. Continue reading

J-I editorial: Time’s up for Rell

Whatever it is about Chris Powell, I find myself noticing his editorials a lot. Here is the first example of Connecticut’s professional press, to the best of my knowledge, calling Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell out for doing what it is she always does.

Excerpt:

… Rell’s time for mere posturing is up. To get a budget the governor now will have to start spending the political capital she has amassed in the opinion polls. It apparently will be spent to appease the government class …

Powell cannot be accused of having a liberal bias.

Worth reading. Continue reading