Shelbourne Global purchased more than $200 million in Hartford real estate, but the 2016 revaluation more than doubled the taxes on three of its Class A office towers.
Cities & Towns
Connecticut has 169 cities and towns. Keep up with their neighborhoods, their municipal governments and regionalization efforts here.
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Back to the future with transit-oriented development
Downtown New Britain is steadily coming back after years of decline. What’s driving this revival? The bus.
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Lack of graduate urban planning programs hurting state
A dry talent pipeline is contributing to economic stagnation in Connecticut’s cities. The state is one of 15 in the country with no accredited, graduate level urban planning programs.
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Solution: Sell off state properties in Hartford
In the years since the state purchased office buildings in Hartford, the MetroHartford Alliance, realty brokers, and others have called for “sale-leaseback” transactions to get them back on the property-tax rolls.
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Solution: Fully fund the state’s PILOT program
Local officials have learned that the state’s PILOT program is also voluntary, in a sense, with lawmakers able to override it when finances are tight.
Posted inCities & Towns, News
Solution: Hartford’s largest nonprofits contribute more
Hartford’s largest tax-exempt institutions argue they simply can’t afford to pledge any significant revenue to the city’s operating budget.
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.