ANSONIA — It’s time to be blunt: the politicians currently running the Ansonia Democratic Party are damaging our City.
This group of political newcomers is constantly negative, advances false, contradictory arguments designed to confuse residents, and now shockingly roots for Ansonia to “fail.”
Having unceremoniously booted many long-standing Democratic Town Committee members over the past two years (for not being sufficiently aggressive enough against the Mayor and his team) the Committee and his candidates have had free reign to spread misinformation intended to rip our community into shreds.
Consider their recent scheme to scare residents with the claim that the Mayor’s budget is “raising taxes.” Wrong and entirely disingenuous. The budget reduces the tax rate by 11.5 mills and the City is collecting over $700,000 less in actual tax dollars.
Try finding another comparable municipality that is lowering the mill rate as drastically, even in the face of a revaluation.
Any homeowner who sees an increase in taxes will also have seen a massive increase in the value of their property – in some cases an increase in value of over 60%. Those that have seen what Ansonia homes have recently been selling for realize this has resulted in a very real increase in value, to the benefit of our homeowners.
But do these polarizing politicians really want a lower mill rate? The group has consistently called for higher mill rates in years past, advocated rejecting commercial projects in favor of spending on park space, and now takes issue with revenue projected from development projects.
Here’s the thing: changing the budget to address their supposed concerns would result in a higher mill rate and increase taxes for more Ansonia residents.
Yet today’s Ansonia Democrats don’t feel the need to come up with solutions. They won’t directly state that they want the mill rate to be lower. They also don’t have any solutions to address any of their criticisms of the budget.
Nor do the Democrats have anything positive to say about the budget’s substantial investment in education (an increase of over $1.8 million) or emergency services. Areas that, at one time, were allegedly their major concern.
Instead, the new group of Democrats sits back and roots enthusiastically for failure. Town Committee member Richard Tylinski goes the furthest, stating that he hopes Ansonia will “move to the #1 ranking in the most distressed cities in Connecticut.” (See May 9, 2023 letter to the editor).
Rooting for Ansonia’s failure is flat-out sick.
Publicly jeering elected officials without the guts to state your own position is simply cowardly.
Let’s be blunt: the new group of Ansonia Democrats are not leaders, and they don’t deserve your attention or your vote this fall.
Lorie Vaccaro
Ansonia Board of Aldermen December 2013 to December 2019
BOA President 12/17- 12/19
