Alderman Fainer Responds To Cassetti Plan

What an ambitious plan, Mr. Cassetti! Your own under-ticket said taxes won’t go down at your plan announcement!

Let’s start with the numbers that jump out: cutting City Hall expenses by 22 percent and every department by 3 to 4 percent.

So, you’re assuming the price of everything else: police cars, fuel, other supplies, and contractors will stay the same?

This will also mean that no employee will ever get a raise! A good motivator to keep well-qualified people in City Hall!

Hiring a “superman” as a City Manager to do four jobs including that of our Grant Writer (a politically-motivated move) is counter-productive.

With a City Manager in place, why would we even need a Mayor? Maybe, an unpaid Mayor (like the Aldermen) serving as a figurehead only?

Eliminating the Tax Board and having the Aldermen handle the city’s day-to-day finances is insane!

Overburden our volunteers even more! Aldermen meetings run 2-3 hours. Add the tax board’s responsibilities on top of that?

Mr. Cassetti, do you really know what the Tax Board does? Handling all the bills and line items over-simplifies their efforts. You want transparency; yet want to eliminate the checks and balances that run the city’s finances.

Now I see your under-ticket backpedaling from your ideas.

In the second video in the Valley Indy, your candidates say they don’t think that they can reduce taxes and don’t want to make any promises until they get the “numbers.”

But you already have the numbers!!!

The city’s budget has been posted online for years and you have FOI’d just about everything else in the city over the past month.

Your plan shows no real numbers on savings, just the usual complaints. Please explain how and where you will make these savings? What services will be cut? Where will the lost revenue from your tax cuts be made up?

Also, the Riverside Drive demo is an ongoing process; it is not an election year ploy. The Ansonia-Derby Interconnect has been ongoing for a few years now.

Lastly, the grand list has gone down but these properties have not gone anywhere. The pre-2008 bank and real estate fiasco created by the Bush administration is to blame. Houses were selling at super inflated prices and now they are back to a reality check.

Is that the Mayor’s fault? No.

This current budget was unanimously approved by the Board of Aldermen (13-0) both Republicans and Democrats.

Your continuous bashing of our town and schools is getting old. It was enlightening to hear our new economic development director say that we are at a 90 to 95 percent occupancy rate on Main Street, praising the Mayor for his efforts.

I, along with many others, like living in Ansonia. We will not go away because you feel the need to talk down about our town.

Maybe there is still room on that “train out of town” your spokesman referenced earlier this year.

The writer is an Ansonia Fourth Ward Alderman running for re-election on the Democratic line.

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