Anyone looking at the city’s budgets and the fallout that has resulted with regard to proposed cuts to our library, youth programs, education, etc, understands the seriousness of what this city is facing. Democrats presented residents with a clear financial picture of the city, where they could evaluate and determine what action to take themselves.
Our hope is to instigate a constructive dialogue regarding the unsustainability of our city’s finances, and give Mayor Cassetti’s administration an opportunity to defend their budget and share their long term plan to address the challenges. While we didn’t specifically address any particular Aldermen, all are encouraged to be a part of this discussion, but we were very surprised at the response from Alderman Lorrie Vaccaro, former Chairman of the Board of Finance.
There should be no one more qualified than Alderman Vaccaro to participate in this conversation. However, when we asked for an explanation of $7MM in funds unaccounted for, and the over $10 million in borrowing and savings account spending, Alderman Vaccaro, responded by providing a psychological evaluation of Democrats as a whole. This is the problem with partisan politics, we present a straight forward and thorough depiction of city finances, in full historical context which clearly captures multiple administrations, and it is turned into an “us vs them” scenario. Devolving a discussion of this significance is a distraction, and is disrespectful to the residents who deserve to hear a thorough and objective debate on the city’s finances.
The city finances are as factual and objective as government management can get, numbers don’t lie. These are very basic questions, which should have very straight forward answers. The answers that we would expect from the former Chairman of the Board of Finance would be either, “Yes, these numbers are correct, but here’s a set of financial projections that show the town will be okay…” or “Yes, these numbers are correct, the city is in a challenging unsustainable position, and we don’t have a solution yet…” or “The $7 million in unaccounted funds came from x,y,z..” Instead what we got from Mr. Vaccaro was… “Projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against their own unconscious impulses…”
Democrats observations that the city is headed down an unsustainable path is not a psychological projection, in fact it’s a direct quote from Mr. Vaccaro himself a month ago where he said, “…we face a future of continually cutting services or constantly raising taxes…” in this Valley Indy guest column.
Perhaps Alderman Vaccaro is resolved to a future of tax increases and services cuts, but we think Ansonia can do better than that, with or without additional funding from the state. It will take leadership that is willing to get creative and open the discussion to all residents, to discuss the future of our city, in a non-partisan fashion. Alternatively, we can continue to sling mud, and avoid the problems while the city goes down the toilet…The choice is all of ours to make. It starts with serious questions to our government, and the consideration and respect of our government to address those questions openly with the capacity and professionalism that their office commands.
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