ANSONIA – Should budget referendum results be disregarded if voter turnout is less than 15 percent?

Or should budget referendums be triggered by spending instead of taxes received?

Those were some of the questions bandied about by members of the Ansonia Charter Revision Commission July 9.

What’s A Charter?

A city charter is a document that acts as a blueprint for local government. It has rules on everything from length of terms for elected officials to how the annual budget is to be put together.

What’s A Charter Revision Commission?

Municipalities can propose changes to their charters by setting up a revision commission, whose members can make recommendations to the Board of Aldermen. The Aldermen can then decide to send the recommendations to the public, who have final say on the proposed changes in a citywide vote.

A Previous Major Charter Change

Former Mayor David Cassetti’s administration and the public supported making a series of changes to the charter in 2013. One of those changes included a requirement that the annual Ansonia budget be sent to voters for approval if the spending plan carries an increase in ‘net taxes to be collected’ of 3 percent or more.

That’s the total number of tax dollars a city expects to collect in a year. It goes up when the mill rate goes up – and it also goes up when new taxpayers are added to the city’s rolls, for example.

Ansonia has held four budget referendums across two budget cycles since April 2025. 

The public has voted ‘no’ each time they’ve had the chance.

Change The Trigger?

Mayor Frank Tyszka, Democrat, was elected in November 2025. The Board of Aldermen went from candidates who all ran on the Republican line to candidates who were elected as Democrats.

He appointed members to a new charter revision commission. Those members were approved by the Aldermen. 

Tyszka has suggested some 2013 charter changes should be reversed, such as giving budget adoption responsibilities revert back to the city’s tax board instead of the Aldermen. 

He’s said that its members are better equipped to scrutinize budget requests since they’re appointed specifically for that purpose. The Cassetti administration had pushed the 2013 change saying that the members of the tax board are not elected officials. The Aldermen are elected.

Finance officials hired by Tyszka said that the charter’s current referendum trigger makes it difficult to craft city budgets. 

Thomas Hamilton, a consultant, called the trigger “particularly onerous” because it doesn’t factor in changes in city spending. Click here for a separate story.

The Latest

The new commission has been meeting since May.

During a meeting July 9, changing the requirement for budget referendums was discussed.

Members talked about whether a budget referendum is necessary since voter turnout has been low.

Commission member Eileen Krugel suggested the referendum results could be disregarded if fewer than 10 percent of voters showed up to the polls. Commission member Beth Lynch, who is also the town and city clerk, suggested setting that number higher, at 20 percent.

Commission chairman Bruce Goldson then suggested a 15 percent requirement, halfway between the two numbers.

“Everybody says they want this process, but they’re not participating, so why are we going through all this if only eight percent of the people really care? Well, that’s my opinion,” Lynch said.

Ansonia’s highest turnout in the budget referendums since 2025 was 9.7 percent.

The most recent referendum, held June 1, saw turnout around 8.5 percent. 

Getting 15 percent of voters to come to the polls for a budget referendum could be a tall order.

Neighboring Seymour has always put its annual budget to public referendum. Turnout in 2025 and 2026 was around 10 percent, according to previous Valley Indy reporting. In 2024, turnout for budget votes in Seymour was between 10 and 13 percent (it took more than one vote to get the budget passed).

Another Suggestion . . .

Ansonia’s chief fiscal officer Michael Iodice said in the meeting that the current trigger – “net taxes to be collected” – is counterproductive. 

He said the referendum trigger should be based on how much money the city plans to spend, not how much it plans to receive.

“If you’re focusing on taxes, you’re actually hindering the growth of the economy, because you’re focusing on minimizing tax increases. Then you can’t capitalize on new growth that comes into your community,” Iodice said.

He said sometimes it’s a good thing when the ‘net taxes to be collected’ increase – for example, when a new business comes to town, which leads to more taxes coming in.

If referendums were based on changes in city spending, then “you can have a lot more businesses coming in, and you can raise the tax revenues on those new businesses,” Iodice said.

He suggested changing the trigger – from a 3 percent increase in ‘net taxes to be collected,’ to a 4 percent increase in city expenditures.

Iodice said the 4 percent number makes sense because it’s a typical increase for a city budget.

“The average municipality increases their budget by 4 percent year-over-year. That’s the average, so we should stay in line with the average,” Iodice said. “If we go above that, that’s what would kick off the referendum vote.”

Other Budget Process Discussions

Members also discussed a change which would require the public to receive 14 days’ notice of upcoming referendums, as opposed to the five days’ notice currently in the charter. 

That change could help boost turnout, members said, while also making it easier for poll workers and voter registrars to run things smoothly.

Members of the commission also discussed the possibility of moving a series of charter budget deadlines back by about a month, giving more time for officials to propose a budget.

Next Steps

No changes have been formally proposed yet. 

A public hearing is scheduled for July 23, where residents will be able to weigh in on the charter revision proposals.

Commission members voted at the end of the meeting to ask the city’s corporation counsel to draft language for the budget process changes – including pushing the budget deadlines back, changing the trigger for a referendum, and implementing language which would cause a budget to automatically pass if enough voters don’t show up to a referendum.

Before any changes can go to voters, the commission will need to approve a draft report to send to the Board of Aldermen. 

More public hearings would be scheduled before the Aldermen could approve a final report and send charter revision questions to voters.

For changes to appear on the Nov. 2026 ballot, the process would need to be completed by early September.