ANSONIA – Voters could have the final say over the city’s budget for the second year in a row.
Mayor Frank Tyszka said Feb. 17 that he will likely propose a tax increase which would require approval at a referendum. He said the increase is necessary due to budget decisions made under his predecessor, David Cassetti.
Tyszka said the city has been spending more money than it’s taking in for years. Thomas Hamilton, a financial consultant hired by Tyszka’s administration to assess the city’s financial situation, said in a public presentation that it would take a 26 percent tax increase to balance income with expenditures.
Tyszka said his proposed tax increase will not be that large. However, he said the increase would likely be large enough to trigger a referendum under the city’s charter.
“It’s going to have to,” Tyszka said, when asked whether he would send his budget to referendum if it meets the charter threshold.
Under a series of charter revisions authored by Cassetti’s administration and passed by voters in 2014, the budget requires voter approval if it increases the ‘net taxes to be collected’ by more than 3 percent.
Tyszka has said on previous occasions that he’d like to revisit Cassetti’s charter changes – which also gave budget approval authority to the Board of Aldermen (an elected board) and took it away from the Board of Apportionment of Taxation (an appointed board).
Tyszka has not yet proposed a budget. He is scheduled to present a proposed budget at a public meeting of the Board of Aldermen March 10.
Tyszka, a Democrat, beat Cassetti, a Republican, in November and assumed office Dec. 1.
Tyszka Says Charter Should Be Revised
The charter changes passed under Cassetti’s administration overhauled the city’s budget process.
Before the charter changes, the Board of Apportionment and Taxation had the final say over the budget. That board is composed of members appointed by the mayor and approved by the Board of Aldermen.
The charter changes gave the final say to the Board of Aldermen.
Cassetti said the changes gave more power to taxpayers, since the members of that board are directly elected.
The charter changes also included the budget referendum provision regarding net taxes to be collected. That provision was activated for the first time last year – and it resulted in voters rejecting three budgets by wide margins.
The Board of Aldermen last year adopted a budget only after making about $1.5 million in spending reductions from their initial proposal. The reductions brought spending down enough so that a fourth referendum wasn’t triggered.
Tyszka has said in recent months that Cassetti’s charter changes hampered the city’s budget process. He said authority over the budget should return to the Board of Apportionment and Taxation, as he argues its members are appointed for the specific purpose of overseeing the city’s finances.
He said the old way allowed for greater scrutiny over the budget, and that the Board of Aldermen “rubber stamped” the mayor’s proposed budgets.
“I’m going to go back to the old way, and if we have to do a charter revision to make sure we have people looking at the budget, that’s what I’m going to ask the charter revision people to do,” Tyszka said at a Feb. 10 meeting of the Board of Aldermen.
Cassetti’s charter changes also included a set of deadlines for different steps of the budget process, but his administration regularly ignored those deadlines in following years.
Similarly, with Tyszka in office, the Board of Aldermen voted to overrule the charter deadlines. The deadline for Tyszka to propose a budget under the charter this year was Feb. 8, but the Board of Aldermen voted to extend it to March 10.