Hartford’s largest tax-exempt institutions argue they simply can’t afford to pledge any significant revenue to the city’s operating budget.
Cities & Towns
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Solution: Alternative revenue sources could bolster city budget, lower tax rate
Massachusetts lawmakers — a place where municipalities rely heavily on property taxes — gave their cities and towns a powerful new revenue-raising tool.
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Myriad ideas exist to solve Hartford’s property tax dilemma
Owner John Tornatore’s Gordon Bonetti Florist is one casualty of Hartford’s unique property tax system, which leans more heavily on businesses than homeowners. Tornatore pulled up stakes for neighboring Wethersfield, where he says he’s enjoying much lower tax bills. For years, John Tornatore chafed at the high personal and real estate property taxes the city […]
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Hartford’s exorbitant commercial property tax curbs economic growth
At 74.29 mills, Hartford’s property-tax rate is by far the state’s highest and among the nation’s highest. That has stifled economic growth in the city.
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Meet the architect of Hartford’s bifurcated tax system
As a result of a pending reval in 1978, some Hartford homeowners faced tax hikes of 80 percent or more. City officials needed a solution – fast.
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Newburgh, N.Y., may have a solution for blighted properties Connecticut can use
Newburgh, N.Y. has a strong cadre of people working on revitalization — and a land bank that has proved a key tool in that effort. It’s a tool Connecticut cities are seeking to adopt as well.
Posted inCities & Towns, News
City Revival — Did We Learn From the Urban Renewal Era?
Many Connecticut cities are seeing a 21st century renewal. Are they getting it right — or at least better — this time?
Posted inCities & Towns, Education, Health, Housing, Money, News, Politics, Transportation
Connecticut faces long crawl out of wealth extremes, crushing debt
Whether it’s expanding access to education and health care, rebuilding roads and cities or making taxes fairer, leaders have many ideas to reduce wealth inequality and promote prosperity. But they remain uncertain about how to solve this crisis while Connecticut simultaneously grapples with a historic debt burden that also threatens its future.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Connecticut’s vanishing shoreline: Towns trying to beat the odds
Shoreline resiliency against sea level rise and flooding in Connecticut is largely in the hands of local governments. But with money tight and local budgets reliant on the taxes shoreline properties generate, efforts to protect coastal communities from climate change have been slow and underfunded. Some communities, however, are making more progress than others.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Connecticut’s vanishing shoreline: One storm away from disaster
Connecticut is fortunate it hasn’t been hit by a tropical-style storm since the successive storms of Irene and Sandy in 2011 and 2012 swamped the coastline, illuminating its vulnerabilities to the effects of climate change. That’s because there’s a general consensus that if either of those storms were to hit now, they would be just as damaging.
Posted inPolitics
Malloy defends investment record at penultimate Bond Commission meeting
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, keenly aware of the unwelcome role his record is playing in the campaign to succeed him, spent one of his final State Bond Commission meetings Thursday defending state borrowing made during his tenure to promote economic development statewide and help Connecticut’s struggling capital city.
Posted inMoney
Among Connecticut cities and towns, the wealthiest are the big spenders
While Connecticut’s distressed cities often are perceived as having bloated budgets, the wealthy suburbs easily outspend their urban neighbors on a per capita basis, sometimes by margins nearing two-to-one. More importantly, shrinking state aid, a lack of revenue diversity and an over-reliance on a regressive property tax system threaten to widen tremendous disparities that already exist between Connecticut’s poorest and richest communities. Second in a series.
Posted inMoney
Already deep in debt, Connecticut struggles with extremes of wealth and income
The growing gap between Connecticut’s richest and poorest citizens, which already outstrips that in most other states, has widened dramatically since the last recession. While only the most affluent households improved their standing, the rest lost ground. How to address this inequality and a crushing state debt at the same time will be at the core of Connecticut’s political debate for years to come. First in a series.
Posted inMoney
Legislature overwhelmingly enacts bipartisan CT budget
The legislature overwhelmingly approved a new state budget shortly before their midnight deadline Wednesday that restores aid for towns; reverses health care cuts for the elderly, poor and disabled; and defers a transportation crisis — at least for another year.
Posted inMoney
Competing CT budget plans rely on April tax bonanza
Democratic and Republican legislators offered competing visions for the next state budget Friday, but both effectively dipped into this spring’s unexpectedly high income-tax revenues to salvage key programs for towns and social services, drawing a sharp rebuke from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.