The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM) today brought in local executives from throughout the state to lobby for continued state aid. The organization also released a survey of towns and cities.
Here are some findings from the 61 towns and cities that responded, from a CCM release:
“Required increases in municipal labor and employee benefit costs, together with costs of state and federal mandates, are increasing more than the level of state aid provided (state aid would increase by less than 1 percent under the Governor’s proposal, and non-education aid would actually decrease).
Here are questions posed and a summary of what the aggregation of the responses show for these issues.
| How many — and which — local government positions (for town hall and board of education) have been cut or not filled over the last two fiscal years?
n Responding towns reported that over 300 full-time positions have been cut or not filled between the general government and board of education; and it was often said that they have not returned to previous staffing levels after cutbacks from 2009 through 2012. n Key positions that were reported as cut or left unfilled included: engineers, risk managers, librarians, teachers, social workers, emergency planners, administrative assistants, assistant assessors, patrol officers, firefighters, human service case workers, school nurses, education paraprofessionals, IT technicians, highway superintendent staff, customer service representatives, public health aides, and other unspecified posts in Finance, Library, Parks, Public Safety Communications, Police and Fire, Health and Public Works. |
What kind of local government service cuts or service eliminations have occurred in your municipality over the past year?
n Answers often reported include: reduced staff availability at municipal offices; reduced road maintenance; postponed equipment maintenance; cut back library hours; changed weekend Firefighter/EMT shifts from paid staff to volunteers; third shift police coverage cut back; funding cuts for capital budget for roads and IT equipment; cut back street sweeping; cut library hours; less transportation available for seniors; defer road improvement and maintenance and equipment replacement; cut Capital budgets to maintain union positions; reduced youth services; reduced senior services; Capital projects cutback; Unable to replace public works vehicles and school buses; and reductions in building maintenance and repair.
| Name three significant service or fiscal-expenditure needs that you believe you will not be able to fully fund, or fund at all, over next fiscal year?
n Answers most often reported by towns include: health benefits fund not being fully funded; worker’s compensation fund not being fully funded; inadequate other post-employment-benefits (OPEB) contribution; road maintenance — repair and re-pavement; capital projects for building repairs and equipment needs; police services, if resident trooper program funding is cut; cost of services for special education; general fund balance reserves; staffing for schools; technology needs; stormwater regulations, if approved, as proposed by DEEP; capital reserve funds for public works, fire equipment and fleet replacement. |
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If the State had not maintained or increased aid to towns and cities over the current biennium, what impact would that decision have had on your community? |
Responses to this question were very uniform. Here are some samples:
n A reduction in state aid would have an immediate impact through the necessity to either cuts services drastically, increase the mill rate or do some combination of both.
n All level of services would be effected and taxes would have risen by at least 3 to 4 percent.
n Reductions in grants-in-aid would have eliminated significant improvement projects, including road reconstruction, replacement of failed boilers. Across the board cuts in staff and services.
n Continued flat ECS funding impacts town revenues to account for education budget increases — a mix of cutting services or raising taxes more. The choice would have boiled down to raising taxes or not adding positions to the police department.
n Any reduction and/or flat funding from the state equates to a reduction in local services or a mill rate increase.
n Without level state funding, property taxes would have risen much higher and serious program cuts would have been necessary – reducing city hall staff hours, eliminating funding to outside service providers, cutting recreational programs and park maintenance, reducing library hours, etc.
n If 100% of the resident state trooper costs are passed along to us, we would have to shift costs for adding a third full-time police officer to cover those costs. Potential to reduce funding for capital equipment, machinery and infrastructure. We would have had a much larger tax increase and many more positions and services cut. It would have devastated our road maintenance in particular. The roads program would continue to lag and the schedule or amount of roads repaired would be scaled back.”